Wall Street Wonderland

Steve Jobs Talks…About his health, but….

2008-07-28T13:49:00.000-05:00

According to Joe Nocera, writer for The Talking Business column of the New York Times, ‘On Thursday afternoon, several hours after I’d gotten my final “Steve’s health is a private matter” — and much to my amazement — Mr. Jobs called me. “This is Steve Jobs,” he began. “You think I’m an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he’s above the law, and I think you’re a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong.” After that rather arresting opening, he went on to say that he would give me some details about his recent health problems, but only if I would agree to keep them off the record. I tried to argue him out of it, but he said he wouldn’t talk if I insisted on an on-the-record conversation. So I agreed.

Because the conversation was off the record, I cannot disclose what Mr. Jobs told me. Suffice it to say that I didn’t hear anything that contradicted the reporting that John Markoff and I did this week. While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than “a common bug,” they weren’t life-threatening and he doesn’t have a recurrence of cancer. After he hung up the phone, it occurred to me that I had just been handed, by Mr. Jobs himself, the very information he was refusing to share with the shareholders who have entrusted him with their money.

You would think he’d want them to know before me. But apparently not..”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/business/26nocera.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

To our readers:

2008-07-07T11:36:00.003-05:00

It's rude of us, we know, but we've decided to take a few weeks off. We need the rest.
But we'll be back.

Bill Gates has gone, what's his legacy?

2008-06-30T14:33:00.000-05:00

From hippy to hanger on

This week marks another first in the 33-year history of Microsoft - life without Billg. The company and the man who co-founded it and rose to become the world's richest geek have parted ways. Bill Gates is no longer chief software architect and will be checking in only as company chairman.

Gates is hailed as the visionary who changed our lives by delivering on the vision of a PC in every home. Certainly, Gates and Microsoft came along at the right time. Ken Olson, former chairman and president of computing pioneer Digital Equipment Corp (DEC), is famed for saying in 1977 he saw no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home. It was also IBM's lack of interest in building software for PCs that gave Microsoft its first break.

Had it been left to companies like DEC and IBM, computing today would likely be a different, analogue, green-screen world.

The challenge of Gates, though, is to put him - and Microsoft - into context. The dictionary defines a visionary as someone “given to fanciful speculations and enthusiasms with little regard for what is actually possible” or “a person with unusual powers of foresight”.

Gates turned computing into a mass market by his focus on “experience” on a low-priced Intel box. He had the “vision” to see what Olson couldn’t when it came to PCs: that given the accessible and affordable tools ordinary people - not just those individuals staffing corporations or the engineering and scientific communities served by IBM and DEC - could do great things with computers. His success, though, turned him into another Olson, a man whose beliefs became contained and defined by the market his company had carved out.

OK, so we all know Gates was fascinated with the idea of the computer from an early age. Before there was Microsoft, there was Trafo-data, which he started with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen at high school to monitor traffic patterns across a roadway. The system used an Intel 8008 chip priced $360. The love affair with Intel, software and the power of what could be achieved was born.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/30/farewell_gates/

Yahoo reorg centralizes power

2008-06-26T13:21:00.001-05:00

Yipes! Yahoo, under intense pressure, reorganized its upper management Thursday in a plan designed to improve its products, underlying technology, and operational execution, the company said.

The new structure leaves Chief Executive Jerry Yang and President Susan Decker at the top of the org chart. As expected, Ash Patel and Hilary Schneider will report to Decker, with Patel leading a new audience products division, and Schneider in charge of go-to-market operations for the United States region.

In addition, a third, as-yet-undetermined executive will report to Decker. That executive will run an "insights strategy team," with responsibilities for centralizing and running a Yahoo-wide strategy regarding use of data and analysis. The new executive will be named in coming weeks, Yahoo said Thursday.

The company also is forming some new groups. One, an audience technology group, will be led by Venkat Panchapakesan. Another group will focus on cloud computing and data infrastructure.

Yahoo underwent an executive exodus in the last two weeks, losing three executive vice presidents, two senior vice presidents, and others. It's not clear to what extent those departures were the cause or the result of the reorganization plan, but Decker indicated in a statement that the reorganization has been under way for months.

"The changes we're making today will help deliver superior global products for users and enable faster and better decision-making," Decker said. "This is a logical next step in light of our success last year in moving to a more centralized approach to developing world-class marketing products.

"We have planned these changes deliberately over the past several months to clarify responsibilities and to capitalize on the scale advantages while allowing for fine tuning to meet local market needs."

Yeah, but will this do it? Don't hold your breath, sports fans.....

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9978152-7.html

Major Internet Shakeup: New top-level internet addresses come with $100,000-plus price tag

2008-06-26T13:20:00.000-05:00

Q&A: What do the new domains mean for me?

A new land grab for internet addresses has been sparked by the governing body for domain names — but with a minimum price tag of $100,000 (£50,000) it may not be a free-for-all.

The massive shake-up in the way that web addresses are assigned, approved this evening in Paris, will mean that people can now apply for a website that ends in any collection of letters — not just the .com-type domains that have dominated the web to date.

Alphabets other than the Latin — Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic — will also be more widely represented in websites. But the new "top-level domains" , as .com and .co.uk are known, will have a hefty price tag.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) , which oversees the way internet addresses are assigned, said that the new domains would cost upwards of $100,000 to register, and will require significant resources to run.

"We are opening up new 'land' which people will be able to go out and claim — like the United States in the 19th century," Paul Twomey, the chief executive of Icann, said. "It's a massive increase in the real estate of the internet."

Internet experts said that the main beneficiaries would be city authorities (.nyc and .berlin are among the first expected to be sold); large companies who want to protect their brands; entrepreneurs who buy and sell domains, and millionaires.

The new system is the most significant overhaul of the underlying structure of the internet in many years. Websites will now be able to be written in full in 15 languages. Foreign scripts have been permitted in parts of an internet address, but the section after the final dot — where you would typically see .com, .org., or .gov — has been able to comprise only 37 characters — a-z, the digits 0-9, and the hyphen.

The relaxation of the rules is expected to inspire a new internet land grab, as companies, organisations and wealthy individuals muscle in on territory that was previously restricted to several generic domains, such as .com and .biz, as well as country codes, such as .fr (France) and .it (Italy).

Would-be applicants are advised that the process is different from registering a regular website. Top-level domains require significant equipment — including servers, routers, and databases — to run. "These new names are not going to be for mom-and-pop businesses," Dr Twomey said.

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4218629.ece

Deal or No Deal? Oops, No Deal!

2008-06-25T13:00:00.000-05:00

Look, a Yahoo-Microsoft deal could happen anytime. Just not yesterday, as it turns out.

It’s easy to be taken in by so-called “sources,” chatting up a new series of talks between Microsoft and Yahoo, either to do a deal to revisit the partial search-outsourcing partnership or to try to one-up that by claiming rather grandly that there is yet another effort to buy the company whole.

But with Yahoo’s stock dropping like a knife and hovering near the dangerous $20-a-share mark yesterday, anyone reporting on the situation should have been deeply cautious about floating rumors about renewed deal-making between the star-crossed pair.

As it is often said, there’s one born every minute, and like clockwork, Yahoo’s stock got an undeserved boost due to those unconfirmed stories.

You did not hear it here first, because BoomTown suddenly got the exact same calls too yesterday–coincidence? I think not!–from “sources” touting Microsoft-Yahoo as “back on.”

But I simply could not confirm it to our site’s standards of reporting. Which is to say, aiming for trying to report with full accuracy versus repeating errant chatter that is so typical now in this deal.

Thus, I declined to crunch on that tasty, but non-nutritious, morsel and opted instead to try to get confirmation from sources who actually knew what is going on.

And those sources at both Yahoo and Microsoft, who certainly can spin like dervishes when need be, emphatically went out of their way yesterday–which is not so typical–to deny any talks were going on or that anything had changed since Microsoft had walked away from a bid for the whole of Yahoo in May or since it had lost out on another effort to do a partial deal.

http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080625/deal-or-no-deal-oops-no-deal/

The High-Tech Job Capital Is Silicon Valley? Not. …It's The Big Apple?

2008-06-24T11:07:00.000-05:00

According to a report released today from AeA, a tech industry trade group, New York and its surrounding metropolitan area leads the nation when it comes to the number of high-tech jobs. Rounding out the top five in order were Washington, D.C.; San Jose/Silicon Valley, Boston, and Dallas-Fort Worth.

New York had 316,500 high-tech jobs, while Silicon Valley had 225,300, according to the AeA.

The study looked at employment throughout 2006; it was the first city-level report created by the AeA since 2000, before the tech bubble burst.

Silicon Valley does have the highest density of high-tech workers, with 28.6% of private sector jobs in the high-tech field. As a much larger metro area with a more diverse set of industries, New York does not even make the top five. (The AeA defines a “high-tech” job as being in one of 49 categories culled from the standardized North American Industrial Classification System that involve creating high-tech products or services.)

If it’s money you’re after, the Valley is the best place to find the highest-paying high-tech jobs, with salaries averaging $144,800. Seattle, number five on the salary list, pays an average of $96,197, while New York–not exactly the cheapest place to live–pays its high-tech workers $91,451.

Coming in at the bottom of the tech-salary scale is San Juan, Puerto Rico. High-tech workers there make just $38,422 on average.

Not every city has the same types of high-tech jobs. Silicon Valley leads in semiconductor manufacturing, while Seattle is the software publishing capital. Computer system design is Washington, D.C.’s purview. And New York has the highest concentration of Internet services jobs.

But all is not rosy in high-tech land. The report warns that the U.S. is in danger of losing its high-tech edge due to the federal government’s policy not to grant visas or green cards to many foreign students studying here, resulting in a “tremendous number of unfilled jobs,” said Christopher Hansen, AeA’s president and chief executive officer, in an interview Monday.

At the same time, the U.S. educational system is not producing a sufficient number of graduates to fill those slots. “Our public schools are not generating the kinds of people who can go into engineering and math and compete,” Mr. Hansen said.

The result is that many high-tech companies are forced to relocate their operations abroad, where they can find the skilled help they need. Mr. Hansen said that allowing foreigners to work in the high-tech industry here would only generate more jobs. His proof: eBay, Google, Intel, Sun, and Yahoo have either a founder or co-founder who was not American-born.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/the-high-tech-job-capital-isthe-big-apple
/index.html?ref=technology

Gates: Thanks for the memories

2008-06-24T11:04:00.001-05:00

Co-founder shares surprises, letdowns, morsels from early Microsoft days

If you ask Bill Gates what life will be like when he stops working full time at Microsoft, he'll have to get back to you. That's because, a week away from the transition, he still hasn't slowed down his pace. If anything, things have picked up as he tries to have one last meeting with all the leaders and projects that are important to him.

Gates, who dropped out of school more than 30 years ago to run Microsoft, steps down from full-time work on Friday. He'll remain chairman and a part-time Microsoft employee.

The Microsoft co-founder did take some time out of his schedule recently to sit down with CNET News.com's Ina Fried and offer some reflections on the early days of the PC market as well as thoughts on where Microsoft is now and what technologies he will need in his new role, working full time for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In the interview, Gates shared some little-known stories from the company's early days, including the fact that Microsoft seriously entertained combining with Lotus, but talks ended when that company's chief executive pulled out. Gates also noted that Microsoft was invited and then uninvited to the launch event for the first IBM PC.

"We'd been invited, and then they decided not to invite us," Gates said. "Well, we had been working night and day. I had told people, yeah, we had this invitation that said, yeah, we're going to go, there's going to be a big deal. And then they decided, nah, we don't want you to come to the thing. That was a little bit of a downer."

Q: As you've been thinking about the transition, what are the kinds of things that have been on your mind the most?

Gates: Well, for 33 years I've worked at Microsoft and come in every day, and thought about what are the new things we need to do, and what's my personal role in that, a lot of e-mail, lot of meetings, lot of product reviews. So, in a sense it's hard for me to project what it's going to be like for me or Microsoft when I'm not here.

As long as I'm here, I'm still sending a lot of e-mail and in a lot of meetings, and so the real change in terms of people having an opportunity to step up and do things, to some degree it's after July 1 when my involvement is only a very specific involvement on particular projects as opposed to the overall strategy thing.

Everybody likes to pick the current competitive battles that we're in, and kind of think, OK, those are the big things. For me, I'd pick like tablet or interactive TV that are, according to me--but I've been over-optimistic before--on the verge of big, big impact. So, I've been sending a lot of mail to the tablet and interactive TV team, sort of sending the mail I would have sent three months from now, now, just giving them encouragement. Because, you know, all the big successes, whether it's Office integration or Windows, it takes a long time for those things to get established.

We thought it would be a good idea for me to go to the Windows 7 group and go see the work, and I was thrilled. Steven Sinofsky took me around, showed me what they're doing.

So, you're going to product group by product group?

Gates: Well, in terms of big meetings, that's pretty much done. Like the Windows group had a meeting, and the Surface group had a meeting, but this is more just sitting down with the top executives, so Stephen Elop, Craig Mundie, Kevin Turner.

The timing is actually pretty good. We just did our business reviews. We do the business planning, which is for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. So, we have the plans in place, and I sat through that last set of reviews, but it's a perfect example of something that as just a board member working on projects I won't sit in those business plan reviews in the future. I mean, Steve (Ballmer) may ask me to sit in on one that touches directly on something I'm doing, but the default is that I'm not there at all.

I hear search is one you're still pretty enthused about.

Gates: Yeah, that doesn't mean I'd necessarily go to their business plan review, but I've developed a relationship with them where brainstorming and thinking about what things we'd pick and how we do it.

You know, it's another good example of something that breakthrough work is not--doesn't happen in a day; it happens in many years. Now, many of those years fortunately are the years we've already put into it, but to really help that keep on track, and just to give them the positive feedback as they're going through it, that group, that's actually the only one that's truly concrete at this point where literally we've scheduled out a bit this summer and even some into the fall when and how I'm going to look at various aspects of their work.

http://news.cnet.com/Gates-big-send-off/2009-1014_3-6242276.html

Yahoo!'s Decker! defends! Goo-Hoo!

2008-06-24T11:02:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! president Susan Decker has criticised the company’s naysayers, many of whom have protested against the fraught firm’s recent web search ad deal with Google.

In an interview with Reuters on Friday, she insisted that the new Goo-Hoo! agreement would not nullify Yahoo!’s position in the internet search market where it is second-placed behind, er, Google.

Decker said Yahoo!’s Panama search advertising system would not be hampered by the deal. Instead she reckoned the agreement would help bring in more cash off of less popular search terms.

“It’s really a back-fill in places where we’re not doing much business,” she said. “It’s our choice every day whether and how we might serve ads from Yahoo! or Google, or a third party if we opened it up further.”

But she refused to be drawn on the inner turmoil that has engulfed Yahoo! over the past week, which has seen a number of key executives scurry for the exit door.

Shares, which are currently trading at $21.99 on Wall Street, have tumbled 16 per cent since the Sunnyvale, California-based firm walked away from buyout talks with Microsoft.

Decker, did however acknowledge why many gobsmacked investors have grumbled about the company’s surprising Google tie-in.

“This is a unique deal. The market and participants are still getting their arms around what this means,” she said.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/yahoo_susan_decker_defends_goohoo/

Facebook now bigger than MySpace

2008-06-23T17:23:00.001-05:00

Facebook has overtaken MySpace in terms of global visitors and page views, according to the latest comScore figures. Facebook has long been more popular in the UK, having moved past MySpace in September 2007.

According to independent web-traffic analyst comScore, Facebook globally attracted 123.9 million unique visitors and 50.6 billion page views in May. MySpace, formerly the number one social-networking site, managed only 114.6 million unique visitors and 45.4 billion page views.

News Corp's MySpace was recently redesigned in a bid to attract new users. It remains more popular in the US than Facebook, notching up 73.7 million unique visitors in May versus Facebook's 35.6 million.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=13489

Jobs' 91% approval rating from employees misleading

2008-06-23T17:22:00.000-05:00

A fledgling company going by the name of glassdoor.com is coming up with some interesting numbers for CEO approval ratings across all industries. The CEO ratings, only a portion of what the site offers, are based upon anonymous reviews submitted by current and former employees. The site also collects salary information for companies and posts it so that employees can see whether their level of compensation is on par with the rest of the industry. The catch? You have to post a review to get more then precursory information regarding the company you're interested in.

Fortunately for us, the site is sharing some of that data with the masses. Glassdoor has received some 40,000 reviews on 9,800 companies since launch, one of which is, of course, Apple. The pertinent information here is the approval rating of one Steve Jobs, CEO of the Cupertino-based company. According to SeekingAlpha's coverage, Jobs' approval rating among former and current employees is currently a robust 91 percent. While the company claims that two out of every ten reviews is rejected based on the posting criteria, we have to wonder whether 91 percent is an accurate number.

This is, of course, the same Steve Jobs who is infamous for firing employees on the same elevator as him in the past, and who, in recent years, has been seen throwing digital cameras across the stage at Macworld. I'm not doubting that the majority of Apple employees are satisfied with their CEO's performance and resurrection of the company, but I'm doubting the sample that the number is taken from.

According to the sample information given on glassdoor.com, five of the sample ten reviews are provided by Apple Store employees in retail locations throughout the country, and only one of the ten actually works in Cupertino. While there are 176 reviews total regarding the company, one has to wonder just how many are from people that have no experience actually coming into contact with the CEO.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/06/23/jobs-91-approval-rating-
from-employees-somewhat-misleading

Microsoft to Yahoo Shareholders: Fire Jerry And We Might Bid Again*

2008-06-23T17:19:00.001-05:00

UPDATE: Microsoft says this story is the result of a translation issue and that nothing has changed (i.e., per Microsoft, Kevin Johnson didn't say what Bloomberg is saying he said.)

EARLIER: A long game of press telephone is reporting that Microsoft honcho Kevin Johnson said Microsoft may consider making another bid for Yahoo if Yahoo's management changes. Translation: "Hey, Yahoo shareholders, Fire Jerry and the board at the shareholder meeting, and we might ease your pain."

Important to note that this is:

* Not a direct quote

* A Bloomberg write-up of a Financial Times Deutschland story

* Kevin Johnson comments may have been made in English and translated into German and back into English, leaving all kinds of room for interpretation. In the second paragraph of the Bloomberg write-up, for example (see below), Johnson is said to have said that Microsoft intends to be No. 1 in search. If he actually said this, he has not only significantly increased Microsoft's search ambitions, he's delusional.

We're requesting further info. But in the meantime...

By Andreas Hippin

June 23 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. may make a new bid
for Yahoo! Inc. if Yahoo's management changes, Financial Times
Deutschland reported, citing Kevin Johnson, head of the
software maker's Platform & Services unit.

Microsoft plans to strengthen its online advertising
business with smaller targeted acquisitions, the newspaper
quoted Johnson as saying. In the long run Microsoft wants to be
number one in search-engine advertising, FTD reported, citing
Johnson.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/microsoft_to_yahoo_shareholders_
fire_jerry_and_we_might_bid_again

Yahoo’s Executive Structure Crumbles

2008-06-19T18:52:00.000-05:00

It’s only been a few hours since we posted the ex-Yahoo Exec tracking spreadsheet, but it’s already seriously outdated. Three more execs will be leaving, say sources close to the company: EVP Qi Lu, SVP Brad Garlinghouse and SVP Vish Makhijani.

As an aside, Jeremy Zawodny, Yahoo’s technology evangelist who announced his departure last week, has announced he’ll be joining Craigslist next month.

Vish Makhijani

Vish Makhijani, the SVP and General Manager of Search, is leaving, say our sources, to become CEO of Yandex, the “Google of Russia.” Yandex dominates the search market in Russia and is rumored to be going public later this year. Makhijani is a long time Yahoo exec, joining the company when it acquired Inktomi in 2002. Vish reported to EVP Jeff Weiner, who resigned earlier this week.

Brad Garlinghouse

Brad Garlinghouse is the Communications & Communities at Yahoo and controls huge properties like Mail (260 million users), Messenger (100 million users), Groups (110 million users), Flickr (47 million users) and Zimbra. Around 600 people report to Garlinghouse, who has been vocal over the last two years in calling for a significant overhaul of how the company does business. Prior to joining Yahoo, Brad served as CEO of Dialpad Communications. Earlier in his career, Brad led VC investments in communications and Internet businesses at @Ventures. He also spent time in leadership roles at @Home Network and SBC Communications.

It’s not clear where Garlinghouse is headed next, the rumor is multiple private equity firms are vying for his attention. Frankly, given his operating experience (he grew most of the properties under his control to no. 1 in their market, even as Yahoo search fell apart over the years), it’s too bad he isn’t ending up in a CEO role somewhere.

Qi Lu

This rumor has been floating around for months, but EVP Qi Lu, the EVP engineering for Search and Advertising Technology Group, will be leaving Yahoo shortly. Lu reports to CTO Aristotle Balogh. He is the chief architect of Yahoo’s Panama search marketing platform (which means his job became significantly less interesting since the Yahoo/Google deal).

Brad Garlinghouse and Vish Makhijani were considered serious contenders to take over departing EVP Jeff Weiner’s role - obviously they’re both off the table now. But a bigger concern is that there just isn’t much executive talent left at Yahoo at this point, other than CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker, who are increasingly isolated and seem to have lost the trust of all but the Yahoo board.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/19/yahoos-executive-structure-crumbles
-lu-garlinghouse-and-makhijani-to-leave/

Steve Jobs and Apple's $19 billion sneeze

2008-06-18T10:06:00.000-05:00

LA Notebook: The incredible plunging share price

For most of us, the flu costs nothing more than the price of a box of Lemsip and a couple of days off work. For Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, the illness has turned out to be a bit more expensive than that.

Like $19 billion more expensive. Which, when you think about it, probably works out at a couple of hundred million dollars per sneeze.

It took me until Friday last week to realise what was going on. Every time I looked at my iPhone's home page, I saw something unusual- Apple's share price symbol was in red, followed by a negative number.

All this was made more baffling by the presentation given last week by Mr Jobs on the new, cheaper, souped-up iPhone at a conference in San Francisco. I've been to these events before, and they are like rock concerts. Music blares. Huge video screens loom. And then on comes Mr Jobs, in black turtleneck, frameless John Lennon glasses, jeans and trainers. He always looks slightly extraterrestrial - as though he is still readjusting to such novel concepts as gravity and an oxygen-based atmosphere. Predictably, the analysts loved every minute. The new iPhone prices could have a short-term impact on profitability, they said, but on account of Apple's imminent world domination, they would upgrade their long-term forecasts.

So what happened? The problem, it turned out, was the video of Mr Jobs's presentation that circulated on YouTube. Bloggers noticed that the Apple chief looked a bit thinner than usual, which - naturally - led to speculation about his imminent death. I say naturally, because Mr Jobs recovered from pancreatic cancer a few years back, but didn't announce it publicly until he was in the clear. This time, Apple went on the offensive, announcing that Mr Jobs had a “common bug”. Alas, that wasn't enough to stop $19 billion vanishing from the company's stock market value.

Which proves, I think, that the description of Mr Jobs as a “rock star” is no longer accurate. After all, dying is usually a good career move for a rock star. No, he is a deity - a messiah in Apple's corporate theocracy. And when God catches flu, people get worried.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/chris_ayres/article4152295.ece

Microsoft Gets Into Interactive TV Ads; Buys Navic Networks For An Estimated $200 to $300 Million

2008-06-18T10:04:00.000-05:00

Microsoft is going after the $70 billion spent on TV ads every year. This morning it announced that it will acquire Navic Networks, a company based in Waltham, Massachusetts that delivers interactive ads across cable TV networks.

The price was not disclosed, but a source close to the company pegs it at between $200 million and $300 million. Navic raised about $43 million between 1999 and 2001 from Himalaya Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Pequot (now FirstMark Capital), Pilot House Ventures, and Gary Lauder.

Navic’s ads are interactive overlays similar to what some advertisers are trying with online video. Except that they are targeted by zipcode to each cable subscriber. As you are watching a regular TV commercial, for instance, you could click on an overlay that opens up a window with more information on the screen, or ask for a brochure to be sent to you via e-mail or regular mail (since the cable company has your address, that’s easy).

TV still represents the majority of advertising spending, and Microsoft needs to be a player there if it wants advertising to become a significant portion of its revenues. While Navic brings interactivity to TV advertising, it does not yet tie back into online advertising campaigns. Microsoft could bridge that gap.

Google is already experimenting with TV ads that can be bought through AdWords and measured on Google Analytics. But Google is confined to Echostar satellite TV subscribers, because the cable companies don’t want to give it access to their subscribers (and have their own effort, the Project Canoe, to crack this nut). Spot Runner is also moving towards integrating online and TV ad campaigns. Although, it runs regular video ads on TV, not interactive ones.

As I’ve argued before, what we need is the interactivity and targeting ability of Web video ads on TV. Perhaps this is a step in that direction.

http://www.techcrunch.com/

Curse me, Beat Me, Make Me Write Bad Cheques: Lehman chief accepts blame

2008-06-17T12:28:00.000-05:00

Dickie Fuld, Lehman Brothers’ CEO and BSD, took personal responsibility on Monday for the investment bank’s embarrassing $2.8bn second-quarter loss, the first in its 14-year history as a public company, and said he remained confident in its future prospects as an independent entity.

“This is my responsibility,” Fuld said during a rare appearance on a conference call to discuss quarterly earnings. “We made active decisions to deploy our capital, some of which in hindsight were poor choices because we really didn’t act quickly enough to the eroding environment.”

Fuld also rejected arguments that Lehman’s earnings power had been permanently eroded by the evaporation of significant fixed-income revenues, especially in mortgage-related products, and by the bank’s decision to reduce dramatically its reliance on borrowed money to boost profits.

“Our core business and our strategy are sound,” Fuld said. He added that Lehman had made enough inroads in equities, merger advisory, asset management and other areas, as well as broadened its reach in Asia and Europe, to make up for much of the fixed-income declines.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/50a84d4c-3b99-11dd-9cb2-0000779fd2ac.html

Goldman to the Rescue

2008-06-17T12:26:00.000-05:00

Goldman Sachs is close to finalizing a plan to restructure a $7bn investment vehicle formerly run by London-based hedge fund Cheyne Capital, in a move that could potentially usher in a crucial new phase in the credit turmoil.

The US bank’s proposed reorganisation of the so-called structured investment vehicle is set to be just the first of a number of deals that could see about $18bn worth of SIV assets restructured in the coming months.

The deal, which could be signed as early as Tuesday, is likely to be closely watched by the financial industry, since Cheyne is one of the largest independent SIVs – and the deal marks the first time that any collapsed SIV has been restructured in this way.

Deloitte & Touche, which was brought in as receiver for the SIV formerly known as Cheyne Finance, was on Monday close to signing off on the plan. The SIV went into receivership last autumn when the value of its credit assets, such as mortgage-linked securities, plunged.

The Cheyne restructuring, which has been brokered after nearly 10 months of negotiations, will require the receivers to organise an auction of the Cheyne assets in the coming weeks, to establish a transparent price for these instruments. This is important because in recent months it has often proved impossible to value these murky assets.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/db9ed2e0-3bd5-11dd-9cb2-0000779fd2ac.html

Goldman and Morgan Stanley make money the old-fashioned way…

2008-06-17T12:25:00.000-05:00

On Wall Street, where just about everyone has lost confidence in financial assets, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley are making money the old-fashioned way: Buying and selling commodities.

Goldman and Morgan Stanley are expected by analysts to report the best second-quarter earnings of the world's biggest securities firms this week, having limited their losses from the collapsing credit market. They also lead Wall Street in commodities trading, where crude oil futures doubled in the past year and the price of products from gold to corn soared to record highs.

Surging prices are attracting investors, as well as companies hedging their positions by buying derivatives. That's played to the strength of Goldman and Morgan Stanley, which dominate the market for commodity derivatives. The two New York-based companies accounted for about half of the $15 billion of revenue that the world's 10 largest investment banks generated from commodities last year, said Ethan Ravage, a financial-services industry consultant in San Francisco.

Commodity trading ``is very large for them, and that is even more important now given what's happening with the rest of the businesses,'' said Frank Feenstra, a consultant at Greenwich Associates, the Greenwich, Connecticut-based research firm whose survey last month found Goldman and Morgan Stanley were the preferred dealers of corporate users of commodity derivatives. ``There are more commodities used, more hedging by companies, and the investor population has increased significantly as well.''

Goldman probably will report a 32 percent drop in second- quarter profit today, and Morgan Stanley may say on June 18 that net income fell 59 percent from a year earlier, according to the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Tch, tch…

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aboqiSz1AZm4&refer=exclusive

Don’t worry. Be Happy! Baba Ramdev has a cure for everything, including economic woe

2008-06-17T12:24:00.000-05:00

Baba Ramdev is all you could wish for in a guru. An aggressively luxuriant beard frames his almost manically lopsided smile. Clad entirely in orange, he is fantastically charismatic, occasionally enigmatic and belches with authoritative ease while waxing lyrical on the wonders of yoga.

So far, so cranky. But those under the illusion that swamis such as Baba Ramdev belong to a bygone era - to an India of maharajahs and rope tricks, if one ever really existed - should think again. Baba Ramdev will pull in revenues of at least £20 million this year. He represents a new generation of superstar lifestyle leaders, one that is gaining ever-greater traction both commercially and ideologically among the sub-continent's newly affluent middle classes.

It is an intriguing sales pitch. “I foresee nobody suffering from pain,” Baba Ramdev tells The Times at his 500-acre headquarters in Haridwar, a pilgrimage town built on an especially propitious spot where the Ganges emerges from the Himalayas.

Vegetarianism, breathing exercises and ayurvedic medicinal treatments (which range from having warm oil drizzled over one's body to the less-pleasant-sounding induced vomiting) are central to this vision - but so are population control, compulsory voting, an end to corruption and swadesi (a kind of economic nationalism). “With this, perhaps India will be a superpower in 15 or 20 years,” he says. Hmmm. I wonder what the Kamasutra has to say about that…..

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/health/article4132763.ece

More speculation on Jerry Yang's fate

2008-06-17T12:23:00.000-05:00

Kara Swisher puts Sue Decker at the top of her list to succeed Jerry Yang as Yahoo CEO if he returns to his former position of founder and Chief Yahoo. She acknowledges that Decker has been part of the team that put Yahoo in its current position, but that she "might blossom if she had full control" over the company. It seems that she already has a lot of control over the company, based on her performance at the D6 conference and analyst calls over the last few months.

Kara also listed former eBay CEO Meg Whitman (who is busy as co-chair of the McCain presidential campaign), former Yahoo COO Dan Rosensweig and even Mark Cuban. Check out Kara's complete list.

Whatever transpires, it would be very difficult for Yang to give up the CEO seat. He wants to prove that he can turn around the company, but he may not be given a chance given all the tumult. Since Microsoft pounced on February 1st, Yang's purple blood has been in the water, drawing a number of detractors, such as Carl Icahn, who would like to see him and the board gone.

Replacing Yang and appointing Decker as CEO or bringing in an outsider to run the company isn't going to dramatically alter the course of Yahoo history. The company needs to to focus on products--getting its Yahoo Open Strategy and AMP! advertising platform released. With a number of key people leaving and the ongoing drama around Yahoo's future, Yang's to-do list is not getting any less challenging

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9970395-80.html?tag=nefd.riv

Yahoo `Damaged Goods' After Yang Fails to Revive Deal

2008-06-13T16:51:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! Inc. CEO Jerry Yang's five-month conflict with Microsoft Corp. ended yesterday. The outcome may not be good for him or the Internet company's investors.

Yahoo said yesterday it scrapped talks after Microsoft refused to pay the $47.5 billion it offered last month. Instead Yang unveiled a partnership with Google Inc. While that deal may add $800 million to annual sales, it may not be enough to push the stock above $30, Canaccord Adams's Colin Gillis said.

``When Microsoft walked, it was a real walk,'' the analyst said. The New York-based analyst recommends selling Yahoo shares. ``This deal has the perception of damaged goods.''

The Google accord may make Yang more vulnerable in a proxy fight against billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who says Yang botched the Microsoft negotiations. Even if shareholders opt to replace the company's directors with Icahn's candidates, Microsoft is no longer showing an interest in buying Yahoo, owner of the second most popular online search engine.

Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. and Citigroup Inc. cut their estimates on Yahoo's stock price, saying advertisers probably will shift more spending to Google. Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, dropped 85 cents, or 3.6 percent, to $22.67 at 9:38 a.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market after falling 10 percent yesterday.

Microsoft rose 53 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $28.77. The world's biggest software maker doesn't want to buy all of Yahoo, even at the $33-a-share price it bid before the end of talks May 3. While Microsoft proposed buying just Yahoo's search business, its directors declined.

Co-founded more than a decade ago by Yang and David Filo, Yahoo had reported eight straight quarters of profit declines before Microsoft's bid and is now relying on its biggest rival for growth.

``This just reaffirms the view that Yahoo, and particularly Jerry Yang and David Filo, blew it,'' said Mark May, an analyst at Needham & Co. in New York. ``It's hard to see how this management team is going to be able to extract or create value anywhere near 33 bucks a share anytime soon.''

Yahoo will allow Google to sell advertising for some of its users' searches in exchange for a portion of the revenue from that advertising. The agreement, which covers sites in the U.S. and Canada, may add as much as $450 million in operating cash flow in the first 12 months, Yahoo said. The agreement isn't exclusive, meaning that other companies besides Yahoo and Google will be able to sell ads that appear on Yahoo's pages.

The accord has a four-year initial term, and two three-year renewals if Yahoo requests them. Advertisers will pay Yahoo directly for ad clicks through its Panama advertising system and pay Google when that company's ads appear on Yahoo's pages. Google will share a percentage of the revenue with Yahoo.

Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Wong didn't return a phone message seeking comment.

The Google agreement ``will strengthen our company's position,'' Yang, 39, said yesterday in a conference call. ``We believe that an open market is critical.''

Google was charging advertisers as much as 70 percent more per search as of late last year, according to Yahoo. The sales boost may add $3 to $5 to Yahoo's stock, depending on how the deal is implemented, said Jeff Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York. U.S. government regulatory scrutiny of the agreement could siphon away some of that value, he said.

The U.S. Senate Antitrust Subcommittee will ``closely examine'' the arrangement, said Chairman Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat. Microsoft has said a Yahoo-Google deal would put more than 90 percent of the search ad market in Mountain View, California-based Google's hands.

Yahoo and Google are waiting up to three and a half months to give the U.S. Justice Department time to review the program before they adopt it.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aPGENllz_g44&refer=us

Is the iPhone, the next great operating system for the 21st Century?

2008-06-11T09:43:00.001-05:00

Jobs should only be so lucky. Whatever...Jobs always tries to save the best for last. Today, at the end of his keynote speech at the Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference, he unleashed a kicker that he knew would make some headlines. Everybody knew that the big product announcement was going to be a souped-up version of the iPhone that exchanged the molasses of AT&T's EDGE data network (barely better than dial-up) for the greasy lighting of 3G broadband (more like Wi-Fi). No one was surprised that Apple would catch up with competitors by building GPS location technology into the phone. And it was a foregone conclusion that Jobs would demonstrate a number of new applications that took advantage of a software development kit (SDK) released to apps creators earlier this year.

What was hidden up the sleeve of Jobs's black cotton turtleneck was the price: the 3G iPhone, which goes on sale July 11, will sell for $199. (If you want 16 gigs of memory instead of the standard 8, you'll pay $100 more.) An iPhone vastly improved over the $600 (then cut to $400) original—for 200 bucks. Did you see that coming?

The monthly fees for unlimited data will be increased—from EDGE's $20 to a $30 charge for 3G—but that seems a reasonable bump considering that the speed will be doubled. An AT&T spokesperson explained to me that the deal with Apple is not a revenue-sharing plan but something more akin to a standard arrangement with a headset manufacturer where a carrier subsidizes part of the price in exchange for revenue for data and voice services in the months to come. In any case, those who have been griping about the high cost or low speed of an iPhone will now have to find something else to gripe about. And those moaning about the $400 or $600 they spent for an original iPhone will have to console themselves that the upgrade won't cost too much (though the aftermarket for original iPhones is now deader than that for Hillary Clinton campaign buttons).

But though the low price will dominate iPhone chatter between now and July 11, there is actually a much bigger iPhone story to tell. Today marked the official transformation of Jobs's original vision of the iPhone—from a world-beating product to a contender for the first big operating system of the 21st century. Much of Jobs's keynote consisted of demos of some of the hundreds of applications that either will ship with the new iPhone or will be available in the new iPhone App Store (which sells apps in the same manner that the iTunes store sells songs and videos).

Jobs took pains to trumpet, before this audience of software developers, how easy it was to create applications for the iPhone that take advantage of its built-in features like motion sensors, multitouch control, maps, and voice technology (since this is a phone, too). He even unveiled a scheme whereby people could distribute miniapplications to small groups (like a teacher creating an app for his or her classes).

All of this represents a drastic shift from Jobs's original contention that the iPhone would be a fairly closed system, even though it used the same operating system as the Macintosh. In an interview after the January 2007 announcement of the iPhone, Jobs said that we shouldn't think of the device as a general-purpose computer, but more like an iPod, which runs very few applications mostly written by Apple.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/140786

Apple may have murdered the BlackBerry

2008-06-10T13:19:00.000-05:00

During the first hour of Steve Jobs' keynote at WWDC, I was wondering why I was wasting my afternoon listening to his stooges drone on about software. But then, in a moment of pure triumph, Steve walked onto the stage and unveiled the new 3G iPhone.

Sure, it was exactly what we expected (minus the MMS), but it also was a call to arms. Instead of maintaining its status as the consumer's cell phone, the iPhone is now the every-person's cell phone and has RIM firmly centered in its sights.

RIM may be the leader in the enterprise market right now and companies like Microsoft will constantly claim that they can hold their own, but rest assured that this is a two horse race. And although the BlackBerry has led the way, Steve Jobs just dealt a decisive blow that will not only force RIM to capitulate, but could see the end of the BlackBerry line altogether.

It may sound extreme at first glance, but trust me, Apple has pushed all the right buttons and played its match perfectly. And as long as the company can get through July without any hiccups, RIM will be left out in the cold.

So why do I have such high praise for the new 3G iPhone? Isn't it just an updated version of the same old thing we've been using for the past year? Isn't it just the logical evolution of a product that seemed all too overwhelming last year and so underwhelming today?

No.

The 3G iPhone is the first real salvo Apple has fired at RIM. RIM has told the world that it believes that it has the best horse in the race. Sure, it may right now. But on July 11, I just don't see how the company could even hint that it still does.

First and foremost, the 3G iPhone will be quicker. And while RIM already has some delightfully fast BlackBerrys on the market, none are the iPhone.

Secondly, the iPhone will soon allow companies and individuals alike, to create and install applications from third-parties. And while RIM already has some third-party applications for the BlackBerry and a similar, albeit less sophisticated, program, it's not the iPhone.

Thirdly, the iPhone will offer the kind of business functionality enterprises have been waiting for. And although RIM is easily the most business-friendly company in the space right now and its BlackBerry is the product of choice for many professionals, it's not the iPhone.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-9963839-17.html

EC' snubs Microsoft Office

2008-06-10T13:17:00.001-05:00

Choose life, choose open standards

European anti-trust commissioner Neelie Kroes today strongly rebuffed Microsoft by urging businesses and governments to use software based on open standards.

“I know a smart business decision when I see one – choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed,” said Kroes. “No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one.”

“Steelie” Neelie issued the scathing statement at a conference in Brussels this morning, reports the New York Times.

The European Commission, when making decisions on what technology to use, should choose to adopt open, well-documented standards over propriety ones, said Kroes.

EU agencies “must not rely on one vendor” and “must refuse to become locked into a particular technology – jeopardising maintenance of full control over the information in its possession,” she said.

In February Kroes slapped a record-breaking €1.35bn fine on Redmond for violating European competition rules. The EC jacked up the fine after the firm failed to comply with the original anti-trust ruling that found Microsoft was charging competitors too much for interoperability information for its servers.

Microsoft refused to cough up the initial penalty of €497m handed down by Kroes in 2004.

Kroes had said that she hoped the decision to issue two periodic penalty payments would close “a dark chapter in Microsoft's record of non-compliance."

However, at the start of this year the EC began two fresh investigations into Microsoft’s business practices following complaints about the software giant’s Internet Explorer browser and interoperability issues with its Office apps.

The Commission is also probing how the International Standards Organisation (ISO) ratified Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) as a second standard alongside Open Document Format (ODF) in March this year.

Microsoft secured enough votes despite a wide range of complaints against the firm’s highly controversial document format which is perhaps years away from being compatible even with its own Office products.

Late last week the ISO confirmed that four national standards body members – Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela – had issued formal appeals against the approval of OOXML as an international standard.

Officials at the ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission will consider the appeals with an outcome expected to be announced by the end of June.

If the two management boards agree to carry the appeals forward, a panel will be established and the process to resolve the dispute could take several months, thereby delaying the official blessing of OOXML as an international standard.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/10/neelie_kroes_snubs_microsoft_office/

Microprocessors are the new funny cigarettes

2008-06-09T14:02:00.000-05:00

JP Morgan urges chip CEOs to inhale

Chip companies need to start acting their age, according to a sage analyst.

Chris Danely, director of semiconductor research at JP Morgan, thinks the major semiconductor players should behave more like old-line companies in the tobacco, food and oil games. He'd like to see the chip firms manage their cash better and reward shareholders with larger dividends. He'd also like them to slash the hell out of their research and development budgets and stop acting like super fancy innovators when they're really just stodgy manufacturing machines.

"Think more like Phillip Morris and less like Google," Danely said. "I know it is very hard to talk like this."

Danely's line is especially hard to swallow out here in Silicon Valley where besting the competitive turmoil that stems from Moore's Law through innovation is meant to be the goal. But that didn't stop Danely from cramming his pitch right down the gullets of Valleyites during last night's annual "Semiconductor Forecast" event held by the Churchill Club.

Other speakers at the event echoed some of Danely's underlying sentiments. The rather mature chip industry looks much less volatile nowadays as compared to even just 10 years ago when boom and bust cycles were the natural companions of silicon. Now, we find an industry that grows revenue at about 10 per cent per year or twice the US GDP.

"There are tons of industries out there that would love to have 10 per cent growth," Danely said. "Now that we are out of this hyper-growth phase, it is time to run semiconductor businesses more like a normal company."

Danely seemed quite taken with Mark Hurd's approach at HP, celebrating the decision to "cut some unnecessary R&D projects" and to manage cash "very efficiently."

Speaking about the chip industry in this way certainly removes a bit of its luster. But Sangeeth Peruri, another panelist and managing director at big money house J. & W. Seligman & Co., said that the chip industry's maturation and stabilization opens up some new opportunities for investors.

Investors now have the time to take closer looks at companies' fundamentals and management. So, you can buy into a company after careful study, worrying less about whether you're timing the purchase for the right cycle, since the cycles are less dramatic these days.

"You used to get killed if you got the cycles wrong," Peruri said.

A number of the analysts expressed concerns over the US tax rebate handed out this year. They expect the boost to fade in the coming months and wonder how that dwindling cash will combine with still struggling banks and a still grim housing market.

"I think we are going to have a recession," Peruri said. "I don't know when it will hit."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/06/churchill_club_chip/

Google Gmail turns some new tricks, with new bigger and better tools

2008-06-06T10:54:00.000-05:00

OMFG, those old rticks were so-o-o tired. It’s about time!

Google will invite users to try new features the company is considering adding to its Gmail service, the company said Thursday.

At 6 p.m. PDT Thursday, users will be able to select from 13 new features in a "labs" tab in the Gmail settings page, said Keith Coleman, a Gmail product manager, in a meeting with reporters here.

The 'labs' tab in Gmail settings now has experimental options for users.

"The idea is you can do whatever you want, get it out to tens of millions of people, and get feedback," Coleman said. And popular features will be incorporated into Gmail proper.

Among the new features that are possible:

• A quick-link tool that lets people bookmark specific Gmail messages.

• Superstars, which lets people select custom stars to label mail.

• The "e-mail addict" tool that lets people lock themselves out of their e-mail account for 15 minutes.

• A fixed-width font option to view a message within a font whose characters are the same width--handy for some formatting challenges.

• Mouse gestures that let users take actions based on mouse movements.

• Custom keyboard shortcuts.

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9961185-2.html

Wikipedia kills Greatest Show On Earth

2008-06-06T10:52:00.000-05:00

It was better than Cats

The curtain has dropped on the web's longest running farce. Or so it seems.

Back in December, we told you the tale of an epic online spat pitting the cult of Wikipedia against the quixotic CEO of Overstock.com. It had everything from conspiracy theories to tabloid UFOs. There was sockpuppeting, spyware, and a cover up of laughable proportions. There was even a SlimVirgin.

And now it's over. Last week, after years of bickering, Wikipedia finally banished the anonymous editor at the heart this bizarre kerfuffle. Mantanmoreland is no more.

Since early 2005, Overstock boss Patrick Byrne has waged an outrageously public battle against a Wall Street sleight-of-hand known as naked short selling - a trick that may or may not break the law. In February last year, Byrne actually slapped a suit on 12 New York brokerage firms, alleging a "massive, illegal stock market manipulation scheme." But that's just the back story for the Wikimadness to end all Wikimadness.

Byrne and his spyware-wielding henchman Judd Bagley accuse a well-known financial journalist named Gary Weiss of spending the past two-and-a-half years gaming the "encyclopedia anyone can edit," using certain pages as a convenient means of discrediting Byrne and his views on naked shorting. Somehow, Byrne and Bagley say, the Fortune.com columnist and one-time BusinessWeek reporter made all the right friends inside the Wikipedia elite.

During multiple phone conversations and email exchanges with The Reg, Weiss always denied these charges. In fact, he says he's never even edited Wikipedia. But Byrne and Bagley insist he's behind multiple Wikipedia accounts, including one called Mantanmoreland.

When Bagley attempted to out Mantanmoreland, accusing the account of sockpuppeting and conflict of interest, he was less than successful. Wikipedia promptly banned Bagley from editing entries on the site. Then it banned his entire Utah neighborhood. And all of Overstock.com. Sockpuppeting and conflict of interest are against the rules, but so is outing people. Yes, that's a paradox. But this is Wikiland.

Then, in the wake of our story, the Wikipedia elite seemed to lose a little eliteness. In April, after a mini-revolt from the rank-and-file, Mantanmoreland was barred from editing the articles in question - though he was free to edit elsewhere. He'd been caught editing those hot-bed articles from at least two different accounts, and the no-outing rule went by the wayside. Almost.

"There was significant evidence that tied these accounts to a real-life identity," says David Yellope, the longtime admin who led the Wikinvestigation. "When a well-known financial writer was in India for his wedding, two accounts in question started editing on India time."

Yes, there was an Wikinvestigation. And a Wikicourtcase. Like we said, Wikimadness. But Mantanmoreland lived on.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/06/wikipedia_and_overstock_revisited/

Microsoft, Apple Fight Over Safari Security Threat

2008-06-04T11:32:00.001-05:00

Microsoft has warned Web surfers about a Safari vulnerability that could put Windows users at risk. The flaw was one of three first found by researcher Nitesh Dhanjani. One of the bugs Dhanjani found was serious enough to be kept secret until a fix is found. However, Apple said it does not consider the problem Microsoft has drawn attention to a security issue.

The software maker has released an advisory for Windows XP and Windows Vista users running Safari, informing them that Microsoft has begun investigating a vulnerability discovered two weeks earlier by Nitesh Dhanjani, a security researcher.

One of three bugs Dhanjani found in connection with Safari, the flaw exposes PC users to a "carpet bomb" attack, allowing potentially malicious files to be downloaded to and run on a PC without the owners' consent.

Apple, according to a post on Dhanjani's blog, does not consider this issue to be "security related" despite evidence that the vulnerability also affects Mac OS X users.

"Please note that we are not treating this as a security issue, but a further measure to raise the bar against unwanted downloads," Apple said in a response quoted on Dhanjani's site.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Microsoft-Apple-Spar-Over-Safari-Security-Threat-63259.html?welcome=1212596447

Icahn Wants Yang's Head On A Platter

2008-06-04T11:31:00.000-05:00

The wrath of Icahn! Carl Icahn is stepping up his rhetoric against Yahoo Inc., saying he will seek to remove Chief Executive Jerry Yang if the activist investor's bid for board control is successful.

Meanwhile, members of Yahoo's board met Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Yahoo is discussing possible partnerships with Microsoft Corp., which formally withdrew its offer to acquire the company on May 3, and is also in talks with Google Inc. about a possible search-outsourcing deal, people familiar with the talks have said.

Mr. Icahn in an interview accused Mr. Yang and the company's board of being disingenuous ...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121251736489942015.html?mod=2_1359_topbox

Yahoo! bitchslapped Ballmer's $40 a share offer

2008-06-03T17:08:00.000-05:00

Surprise, surprise! Yahoo! did its best to stymie a takeover by Microsoft, even when it offered $40 a share, because chief executive Jerry Yang let his heart rule his head.

According to documents released by Delaware's Chancery court this took two forms - adding poison pill clauses to contracts which would reward staff for leaving the company in the event of a takeover. Secondly pursuing an advertising deal with Google which would leave Microsoft with an expensive extraction job to avoid anti-trust charges if it wanted to conclude any deal with Yahoo!

Documents accuse Yahoo!'s chief executive Jerry Yang of "deep hostility toward Microsoft" and blamed the board for not protecting shareholders from damage caused by that bias. It is also claimed that Yang had previously rejected an advertising and search deal with Google because both areas were too central to Yahoo!'s future business. He restarted talks with Google only in reaction to the Microsoft offer.

The papers also reveal the length of time Microsoft has been pursuing Yahoo!

The company first endured Ballmer's seduction techniques in mid-2006. Further "overtures" were made to the board in August and October 2006 and in January and October 2007 before the first public offer in January 2008.

The document states: "Yahoo!'s reaction has been consistent, giving the back of the hand to Microsoft's efforts towards a consensual deal, including a January 2007 acquisition proposal offering about $40 per share."

In October 2007 Yang and the board agreed to write a standby press release all but rejecting any future Microsoft offer.

The documents accuse Yang and Filo of letting their hearts rule their heads by letting their emotional connection to the company they started over-rule the best interests of shareholders.

"Yang's ego drove him to strongly desire a future for Yahoo that could diverge from the best interests of shareholders - preserving independence from industry giant Microsoft."

The poison pill measures would have given all 14,000 Yahoo! staffers the right to walk out, and pick up generous termination payments, for two years following any takeover if there was "substantial adverse alteration" in their jobs. Yang is also accused of keeping secret Microsoft's own retention plans for staff. These actions were likely to hinder any smooth integration of the two companies.

The case is being brought by Yahoo! shareholders including Detroit's Police and Fire Department Retirement and the city's General Retirement System.

The papers were filed under seal with the court but Judge William B Chandler III ordered them released. The documents are available as pdfs from here.

More immediately for Yahoo! it must face shareholders, including Carl Icahn, at its general meeting in July. Shareholders will vote to back the existing board or select new directors more likely to approve the takeover.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/03/yahoo_rejected_earlier_ms_offer/

Can The Steve Set Me Free?

2008-06-03T17:04:00.002-05:00

Enough about my iPhone; let’s talk about Me.

It’s exactly one week until the Jerk takes the stage the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference to present another basket of fetish objects to his many worshipers and bootlickers. The diviners have fully examined the pigeon entrails and shipping manifests to prophesize the rebirth of the iPhone: It is said to surf faster, know its location better, and take pictures with more pixels. And it might even be cheaper.

Now there is a flurry of speculation about improvements to a minor icon an the Apple Pantheon: the .Mac online service. For six years, .Mac has been a $100 a year bundle of handy Internet services, now including e-mail, online hosting, backup, photo sharing, and tools to synchronize calendars and address books. Industry reports say Apple has between 1 million and 2 million subscribers.

Those diving into the latest update to Apple’s operating system found that it no longer contains the text “.Mac” but uses a variable “%@” so the name can be updated on the fly by Apple. Indeed, hidden in the software is the phrase “%@ is the new name of Apple’s online service (was .Mac).”

Saturday, John Gruber at Daring Fireball found that “Me.Com” appears to be owned by Apple. “Me” has been on Apple’s mind since 2005, when it registered “Mobile Me” as a trademark for “telecommunication services for the dissemination of information by mobile telephone, namely the transmission of data to mobile telephones” along with “music players,” “digital video players,” “MP3 players,” and “software related thereto,” according to Ars Technica.

And Macworld discovered that Apple has filed for a number of domains in the new “.Me” top level domain that is about to be begin ostensibly for the former Yugoslavian republic of Montenegro. These include apple.me, ipod.me and itunes.me. (This may mean nothing as companies often register their trademarks in new top level domains.)

Now is certainly a great time to expand and rename .Mac. Much of the energy in software development is around online applications, which would be a logical evolution for Apple’s iLife and iWork software. Moreover, the iPhone and iPod Touch are particularly suited to services that blend small local applications with storage and other processing handled on an Internet server.

But the .Mac brand needs a change. If you chat on your iPhone, jog with your iPod Shuffle but still grind out your spreadsheets on a PC, you might find using an online service called “.Mac” a bit jarring.

While Apple no doubt will stay abreast of technology and create artful marketing, I wonder whether it will also keep up with the realities of online economics: Google has decreed that most online services are supported by advertising not fees.

Amid all the superlatives thrown about at a Steve keynote, “free” is rarely heard amid the barrage of “unique” and “amazing.” Jobs has been very content to position Apple products as offering superior technology and design for premium prices. Moreover, Apple has not yet come to terms with how to fit advertising into its music and video businesses.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/will-steve-jobs-set-me-free/?ref=technology

Whoops! Yahoo's jig is up!

2008-06-02T21:55:00.000-05:00

Judge orders Yahoo investor lawsuit made public

An investor lawsuit against Yahoo Inc's board over its rebuff of Microsoft Corp's $47.5 billion buyout bid was made public by a judge on Monday who said that Yahoo had not shown good reason to keep it confidential.

A copy of the unsealed complaint, and a letter from Delaware Chancery Court Judge William Chandler explaining his decision, were posted on the Web site of law firm Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP, which represents investors in the case.

"I conclude that defendants have not satisfied their burden to show good cause for the continued filing of the portions of the complaint under seal," the judge wrote.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKN0229271420080602

New iPhone Is Already Here

2008-05-30T17:58:00.000-05:00

The launch of the next-generation iPhone promises to be Steve Jobs' greatest stunt yet.

Apple, Jobs' secretive computer and gadget company, has been quietly positioning millions of units of a mysterious new product--almost certainly the new iPhone--in key markets since March. And yet, incredibly, not one credible image of Apple's new product has yet been published.

If the new phone is a flop, it's going to be a doozy. Apple is promising to sell 10 million of the gizmos this year; many investors are betting the Cupertino, Calif., company will sell many more than that. Yet Jobs has managed to keep the look, the feel and a complete list of the phone's features under wraps.

It's almost certain Jobs will unveil the latest version of the iPhone June 9, when he speaks at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. The gadget will go up for sale shortly thereafter. Ryan Peterson, co-founder at start-up ImportGenius.com, was the first to get the details of how Apple will make this happen. Peterson--an iPhone fan himself--sells shipping data culled from a clutch of government and private databases.

Meanwhile, analysts have a good idea who is making the parts inside the phone. Apple's new model is likely built around new, burlier communications chips from Infineon, says Will Strauss, a veteran communications chip watcher at Forward Concepts. Global positioning systems will be another new capability, Strauss says.

The look and feel of the phone, however, remains a mystery. Security at Apple's headquarters is tight. Rank-and-file staff say sensitive projects are draped with cloth before they're even brought into work. Yet Jobs would have had to have let others in on the secret once they handed off the specs for the new phone to Quanta (and quite probably also to Hon Hai Precision Industry) for assembly in sprawling compounds in China's Guangdong province.

One clue: Jobs began racking up serious mileage on his corporate jet during the company's final quarter of 2007, as he likely finalized deals with distribution partners in Europe and Asia, and perhaps scrutinized the first 3G iPhone handsets to come from his partners' factories. Morgan Stanley's (nyse: MS - news - people ) Kathryn Huberty was the first to spot the enormous jump in Jobs' airplane expenses--to $550,000 from $203,000 during the previous quarter.

During the first quarter of 2008, however, the focus shifted back to Cupertino. Apple's engineers were scrambling to revise the phone's software, and the company delayed by a week a software development kit that would open up the iPhone to outside developers. It was all backed by a $100 million "iFund," launched by Kleiner Perkins to fuel developers crafting applications for the phone.

Less than two weeks later, in mid-March, the first shipments of the new devices began arriving. The first 20 containers arrived at the Port of Oakland, Calif., the third-largest port on the West Coast, March 19, according to ImportGenius.com. The containers were quickly trundled off the ships and trucked 27 miles south to a distribution center in Fremont, Calif. More shipments followed on March 27, April 28 and May 6.

On April 23, when Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook told investors on Apple's quarterly earnings call the company would sell 10 million iPhones before the year was out, he knew that millions of the new phones were already on their way to retailers.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/05/29/stevejobs-iphone-
apple-tech-intel-cx_bc_0530stevejobs.html

Israelis and Palestinians Launch Web Start-Up

2008-05-29T14:57:00.000-05:00

Nibbling doughnuts and wrestling with computer code, the workers at G.ho.st, an Internet start-up here, are holding their weekly staff meeting — with colleagues on the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

They trade ideas through a video hookup that connects the West Bank office with one in Israel in the first joint technology venture of its kind between Israelis and Palestinians.

“Start with the optimistic parts, Mustafa,” Gilad Parann-Nissany, an Israeli who is vice president for research and development, jokes with a Palestinian colleague who is giving a progress report. Both conference rooms break into laughter.

The goal of G.ho.st is not as lofty as peace, although its founders and employees do hope to encourage it. Instead G.ho.st wants to give users a free, Web-based virtual computer that lets them access their desktop and files from any computer with an Internet connection. G.ho.st, pronounced “ghost,” is short for Global Hosted Operating System.

“Ghosts go through walls,” said Zvi Schreiber, the company’s British-born Israeli chief executive, by way of explanation. A test version of the service is available now, and an official introduction is scheduled for Halloween.
The Palestinian office in Ramallah, with about 35 software developers, is responsible for most of the research and programming. A smaller Israeli team works about 13 miles away in the central Israeli town of Modiin.

The stretch of road separating the offices is broken up by checkpoints, watch towers and a barrier made of chain-link fence and, in some areas, soaring concrete walls, built by Israel with the stated goal of preventing the entry of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Palestinian employees need permits from the Israeli army to enter Israel and attend meetings in Modiin, and Israelis are forbidden by their own government from entering Palestinian cities.

When permits cannot be arranged but meetings in person are necessary, colleagues gather at a rundown coffee shop on a desert road frequented by camels and Bedouin shepherds near Jericho, an area legally open to both sides.

Dr. Schreiber, an entrepreneur who has already built and sold two other start-ups, said he wanted to create G.ho.st after seeing the power of software running on the Web. He said he thought it was time to merge his technological and commercial ambitions with his social ones and create a business with Palestinians.

“I felt the ultimate goal was to offer every human being a computing environment which is free, and which is not tied to any physical hardware but exists on the Web,” he said. The idea, he said, was to create a home for all of a user’s online files and storage in the form of a virtual PC.

Instead of creating its own Web-based software, the company taps into existing services like Google Docs, Zoho and Flickr and integrates them into a single online computing system.

G.ho.st also has a philanthropic component: a foundation that aims to establish community computer centers in Ramallah and in mixed Jewish-Arab towns in Israel. The foundation is headed by Noa Rothman, the granddaughter of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister slain in 1995.

“It’s the first time I met Palestinians of my generation face to face,” said Ms. Rothman, 31, of her work with G.ho.st. She said she was moved by how easily everyone got along. “It shows how on the people-to-people level you can really get things done.”

Investors have put $2.5 million into the company so far, a modest amount. Employing Palestinians means the money goes farther; salaries for Palestinian programmers are about a third of what they are in Israel.

But Dr. Schreiber, who initially teamed up with Tareq Maayah, a Palestinian businessman, to start the Ramallah office, insists this is not just another example of outsourcing.

“We are one team, employed by the same company, and everyone has shares in the company,” he said.

At G.ho.st’s offices in Ramallah, in a stone-faced building with black reflective glass perched on a hill in the city’s business district, employees say they feel part of an intensive group effort to create something groundbreaking. Among them are top young Palestinian programmers and engineers, recruited in some cases directly from universities.

The chance to gain experience in creating a product for the international market — a first for the small Palestinian technology community — means politics take a backseat to business, said Yusef Ghandour, a project manager.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/technology/29compute.html?_r=1&ref=
technology&oref=slogin

The mogul who would run Yahoo

2008-05-28T15:07:00.000-05:00

He made his mark at Microsoft as head of the company's worldwide sales force at a time when it seemed everyone hated the company - most of all its customers. In 2 1/2 years Kevin Johnson achieved a miracle: He turned Microsoft's customer satisfaction numbers around.

After that, CEO Steve Ballmer gave Johnson a really hard job: Figure out what to do about Google, which now garners more revenue from online advertising than Microsoft does from Windows.

Plan A, which Johnson spearheaded, was to buy Yahoo, a company that for all its problems commands roughly twice as much online-ad revenue as Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500). Plan B, it would appear, is to acquire Yahoo's search business and leave the rest. In the middle of all this, while immersed in Yahoo talks "seven days a week," the affable Johnson, 47, known to insiders as KJ, agreed to talk to Fortune twice, once in April and once in late May.

"Online is a very, very significant growth opportunity for us," he says. It's also something of an obsession for his boss. It was the only part of Microsoft's business that Ballmer talked about in his presentation at the company's annual CEO summit in early May. He showed a PowerPoint slide that displayed approximate ad revenue for the largest media companies in the U.S.: GE/NBC (GE, Fortune 500) on top at $15 billion, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) in the middle at $8 billion, Microsoft down near the bottom, with a measly $2 billion. Ballmer estimates that the $40 billion spent this year on online advertising will double by 2010. If Microsoft is ever going to approach the growth it achieved during the PC boom, it has to grab some of that action before Google takes it all.

That's where Johnson comes in. He holds an unwieldy portfolio at Microsoft. On one hand, he's in charge of the company's core Windows monopoly - for better or worse, it was on his watch that the company released the much criticized yet highly profitable Windows Vista. With his other hand he runs Windows Live Services - a division whose failures he described bluntly in a May 18 memo to his staff: "The fact is we are not where we want to be in [online services] yet, and we've been in this position longer than we'd all like."

There's an important link between these two seemingly unrelated businesses. Ballmer wants Johnson to take Microsoft's so-called platform business - its PC-based Windows software franchise - and migrate it toward what Microsoft calls "software plus services." Just as Windows was the framework on which software ran in the PC era, Windows Live Services could be the framework for Internet computing. It's unlikely that Microsoft will ever create the kind of monopoly on the web that it enjoyed in PCs, but the company is deploying its considerable resources to control as much of it as possible.

During a long conversation, Johnson draws a simple chart on a whiteboard. Four vertical rectangles represent industries that profit from online advertising: search, information and content, communications and social networking, and online productivity services (e.g., word processing on the web rather than on the desktop with Microsoft Word).

Underneath all four is a horizontal box - the revenue-generating ad platform on which the other industries rely. That box is key to Microsoft's online aspirations. "There will be a small number of big-scale players in that underlying platform," Johnson says. Microsoft has been building its platform though acquisitions, but before its $50 billion bid for Yahoo, the most it had ventured was $6 billion last year for aQuantive's system for buying and placing ads.

But for a platform to work properly, Johnson says, it needs scale. "The more ad inventory you can get, the better job you can do to target ads, drive efficiency, and deliver better yield for publishers." Google has scale; Microsoft doesn't. But it does have a lot of money. Thus the Yahoo pursuit.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/26/magazines/fortune/tech/kirkpatrick_johnson.fortune/

Will Windows 7 prove deadly to Vista? (Or how many times can you kill the dead?)

2008-05-28T15:04:00.002-05:00

Lots and lots of material clogging up the internet pipes today about Windows 7.

It follows the first public demo of the technology yesterday at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego. You can read Maggie Shiels' piece here.

Putting aside issues about the touch technology itself for one moment, the biggest question about this public demo of Windows 7 is: what harm will its promise do to sales of Vista?

I just received an interesting note about Windows 7 from the Microsoft PR team. In it, it states: "Microsoft absolutely recommends customers deploy Windows Vista today."

In other words, Microsoft are telling XP customers not to wait for Windows 7 but to grab Vista now. Despite issuing more 140 million licenses for Vista worldwide, it's seen by many as a failure.

And given that Windows 7 is supposed to be launched in 2010 that's close enough for many customers, including IT buyers in companies, simply to keep on using Windows XP and wait for Windows 7.

Microsoft itself is only too aware of this problem.

As Chris Flores writes on the Vista blog: "With Windows 7, we're trying to more carefully plan how we share information with our customers and partners."

If Microsoft reveals too much about Windows 7 it's only going to make XP customers more likely to wait, and if the firm once again over promises on what 7 will deliver, the launch itself could be as flat as the one that greeted Vista.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/05/will_7_prove_deadly_to_vista.html

Apple patent filing suggests solar powered iPhone

2008-05-27T11:05:00.000-05:00

The battery life of portable gadgets has always been a source of frustration. But Apple may have found an eco-friendly way around the problem – by integrating a solar panel behind, say, the iPhone’s LCD display.

Apple has filed a patent application for the integration of a layer of solar cells below a gadget’s LCD display. Essentially, sunlight passing across, say, the iPhone’s screen could be soaked-up by the solar panel beneath the LCD and then turned into useable power for the phone.

The firm's "Solar cells on portable devices" patent application states that “solar cells embedded into the device then provide the electrical power to charge the batteries. The power generated from the solar cell can also directly power the operations of the device”.

It’s not clear at this stage which devices Apple may consider using solar power for, although the iPhone would be an obvious guess because battery life on the phone has been panned since day one.

The patent also states that information about solar-power generation could be displayed on the device’s main screen, allowing users to monitor the amount of mains-sourced power left versus the level of solar charge available.

Apple isn't the first manufacturer to consider integrating solar cells directly into gadgets though. In 2007, Motorola developed a screen allowing around 75 per cent of light to radiate through, meaning a solar cell could be placed behind to soak-up the light and turn it into useable power

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/05/27/apple_solar_power_patent/

Chicago demands ticket taxes from eBay, StubHub

2008-05-27T11:04:00.000-05:00

The City of Chicago is suing eBay and its secondhand ticket outfit StubHub, claiming they've failed to collect millions of dollars a year in city taxes.

On Monday, as reported by The Associated Press, the city filed separate suits against eBay and its subsidiary, demanding records of their Chicago-area ticket sales. A Chicago ordinance requires businesses to collect taxes on the resale of all tickets to "sporting events, cultural events, and other amusements taking place in the city," and the dual-suits allege that the two online outfits refuse to do so.

eBay did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But according to Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Law, the company has told the city it's immune to the ordinance. It has also refused to provide records of its online ticket sales, she says.

"One of the big issues is that we don't exactly know what we're losing in taxes. The companies involved have not provided the paperwork that would tell us what we're missing out on," Hoyle told us. "They claim that the ordinance isn't applicable to them."

In addition to asking for records, the suits asks for money. Chicago demands that the two online outfits start collecting and remitting its amusement tax - and fork over some back taxes as well.

As Hoyle points out, the Chicago Municipal Code requires all ticket resellers and all ticket reseller agents to collect the city's amusement tax. The agents bit includes websites, but that wasn't added until September 2006, says Donal Quinlan, a spokesperson for the office of Chicago alderman Edward Burke, who was instrumental in revising the ordinance.

Burke's office estimates that Chicago is missing out on $16m a year in taxes just on the resale of tickets over the net. Or at least, that was the estimate back in 2006.

A pre-Internet-era Supreme Court case says that online businesses aren't required to collect sales taxes unless they have a physical presence in the state where the customer resides. StubHub has offices in Chicago and that may mean that eBay has a physical presence in Illinois as well.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/22/chicago_sues_ebay_and_stubhub/

First Microsoft says they and then they won’t

2008-05-22T10:38:00.000-05:00

Open source advocates have questioned Microsoft's commitment to using open document standards in the future.

The computer giant has said it will implement use of the Open Document Format (ODF), "sometime next year".

The Free Software Foundation Europe said: "It's a step in the right direction but we are sceptical about how open Microsoft will be."

The European Commission, which has fined Microsoft for monopolistic practice, welcomed the move.

"The Commission would welcome any step that Microsoft took towards genuine interoperability, more consumer choice and less vendor lock-in," it said.

The Commission added that it would look into whether Microsoft's announcement "leads to better interoperability and allows consumers to process and exchange their documents with the software product of their choice".

Governments will be looking for actual results, not promises in press releases. Open source software advocates have long criticised the file formats used by Microsoft's Office suite of programs because they are not genuinely interoperable with software from third parties.

Microsoft has said it will add support for ODF when it updates Office 2007 next year. Promises, promises....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7414547.stm

‘Big Brother’ database for all phones and e-mails

2008-05-22T10:35:00.000-05:00

Is this a paranoid fantasy or what? A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.

The information would be held for at least 12 months and the police and security services would be able to access it if given permission from the courts.

The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients. There will also be concern about the ability of the Government to manage a system holding billions of records. About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated 3 billion e-mails are sent every day.

Home Office officials have discussed the option of the national database with telecommunications companies and ISPs as part of preparations for a data communications Bill to be in November’s Queen’s Speech. But the plan has not been sent to ministers yet.

Industry sources gave warning that a single database would be at greater risk of attack and abuse.

Jonathan Bamford, the assistant Information Commissioner, said: “This would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far. We are not aware of any justification for the State to hold every UK citizen’s phone and internet records. We have real doubts that such a measure can be justified, or is proportionate or desirable. We have warned before that we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Holding large collections of data is always risky - the more data that is collected and stored, the bigger the problem when the data is lost, traded or stolen.”

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “Given [ministers’] appalling record at maintaining the integrity of databases holding people’s sensitive data, this could well be more of a threat to our security, than a support.”

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/telecoms/article3965033.ece

Microsoft! offers! Yahoo! less!

2008-05-19T10:13:00.001-05:00

Guess who's b-a-a-c-k and still all hot and bothered?

Microsoft said yesterday that a deal with Yahoo!, but not a full-blown acquisition, is still very much on the table.

Although it refused to rule out a possible buyout, Microsoft issued a statement saying it was discussing alternative deals with Yahoo!.

Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo! Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or with other third parties.

Yahoo! is under pressure from Carl Icahn, who is pushing to replace its board of directors in favour of one which supports the takeover. It has a shareholder meeting 3 July. Clearly the pressure is intensifed if Microsoft's deal, or a version of it, is still on the table. Anonymous sources associated with Microsoft said the software giant had not held talks with Icahn.

Yahoo! issued its own statement in response to Microsoft's:

Yahoo! has confirmed with Microsoft that it is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo! at this time. Yahoo! and its Board of Directors continue to consider a number of value maximizing strategic alternatives for Yahoo!, and we remain open to pursuing any transaction which is in the best interest of our stockholders. Yahoo!'s Board of Directors will evaluate each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties, with a focus on maximizing stockholder value.

Yahoo! is already talking to Google about working together in online advertising - discussions which Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, blamed for ending the original discussions. Another possibility is that the two companies combine their search engine technology and audiences.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/19/microsoft_yahoo_still_talking/

Jerry Yang prepares troops for proxy battle

2008-05-16T14:07:00.001-05:00

With Carl Icahn launching a proxy fight Thursday to unseat Yahoo's board of directors, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang issued a letter to employees, as the Internet pioneer gears up for battle. This letter is likely to be the first in a string, as the proxy fight heats up at a rapid pace. Yahoo's shareholder meeting is less than two months away.

* * *
To: All Worldwide Employees
From: Jerry
Subject: today's news

Yahoos,

Today, Carl Icahn announced his intent to nominate a slate of 10 directors to take control of our board of directors at this year's annual meeting. We sent him a letter in response, which we made public in a press release. I'm attaching a copy of that press release, including the full text of our letter, and you should read it carefully.

We always want to hear the views of our stockholders, but you should know that Mr. Icahn's letter reflects a significant misunderstanding of the facts about the Microsoft proposal and the diligence with which our board evaluated and responded to that proposal.

We believe our board has the independence, knowledge, experience, and commitment to maximize value for all of our stockholders. Yahoo is a great company with a truly unique set of highly valuable assets that is growing, profitable, and executing well on its strategic plan to enhance our leadership position in online advertising. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 are a testament to this.

Today's events will undoubtedly draw a lot of media attention, and there will be lots of speculation about what happens next for Yahoo. I ask all of you to put aside the rumors and speculation, and stay focused on the business at hand and what we do best--transforming the online experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers, and developers.

I know you all have a lot of questions, and so I've also attached some FAQs that will address some of your questions. As we've said before, we'll do our best to continue to update you as new information becomes available. Thank you again for your continued hard work, as we work together to make Yahoo a stronger leader in the online marketplace and an even better company.

Jerry

FAQs:
Can stockholders nominate directors to the board?

Stockholders, as equity owners of the company, have the ability to nominate one or more directors for election to a board at the company's annual meeting, as long as they comply with the requirements contained in our bylaws. Under our bylaws, today was the last day that a stockholder could nominate a candidate for director.

How long will all this take?
We can't speculate on how events will develop at this time, but we plan to hold our annual meeting in a couple of months.

I ask all of you to stay focused on the business at hand and what we do best--transforming the experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers and developers, all while enhancing our leadership position in the online marketplace.

What's our next step?
We will file preliminary proxy materials with the SEC that will describe the matters to be voted on, including the company's nominees for election to the board, and the board's recommendation. Once those materials are cleared by the SEC, we will mail them to our stockholders.

In the meantime, we should remain focused on doing what we do best--transforming the experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers and developers, all while enhancing our leadership position in the online marketplace. We will continue to update you as information becomes available, but please remember that we are subject to various legal restrictions on what we can say and when we can say it.

What can employees do
We ask you to continue to put aside all rumors and speculation you may be hearing. None of us should allow external reports to shift our focus away from doing what we do best--transforming the experiences of our users, advertisers, publishers and developers, all while enhancing our leadership position in the online marketplace.

* * *
And here's what Yang wrote to all Yahoo senior vice presidents and executives of higher ranking, outlining not only what the company has done to respond to Icahn but also highlighting "talking points" for employees.

Yahoos looking to get a jump on what your manager may be saying to you on all of this, take note.

To: All SVPs and Above
From: Jerry
Subject: our response to carl icahn

Leaders,

As you know, Carl Icahn today announced his intention to nominate 10 directors to take control of our board of directors at our 2008 annual meeting.

This afternoon, we issued our response to Mr. Icahn and are sending an e-mail to all employees, updating them on these recent developments. A copy of our response, including the letter to Mr. Icahn, is attached. I urge you to read it.

As we outline in our letter, we believe our independent board has more than demonstrated the fact that it has the knowledge, experience, and commitment to maximize value for all Yahoo stockholders.

I will be scheduling a call with you soon. In the meantime, please find below some talking points for you to use with your teams.

Jerry

Talking Points:

* Carl Icahn today announced his intention to nominate 10 directors to take control of our board of directors at our 2008 annual meeting.

* We believe much of what Mr. Icahn said today reflects a significant misunderstanding of the facts about how hard our independent board has worked--and continues to work--to maximize stockholder value. We believe our independent board has the knowledge, experience, and commitment to maximize value for all Yahoo stockholders.

* Soon, we will file preliminary proxy materials with the SEC that will describe the matters to be voted on at the annual meeting, including the company's nominees for election to our board of directors, and the board's recommendation. Once those materials are cleared by the SEC, we will mail them to our stockholders.

* Stockholders, as equity owners of the company, have the ability to nominate one or more directors for election to the board at the company's annual meeting, as long as they comply with the notice requirements contained in our bylaws. Under our bylaws, today was the last day that a stockholder could nominate a candidate for director.

All Yahoo stockholders of record, as of the closed of business on June 3, 2008, the record date for the annual meeting, are entitled to vote on the election of directors at the annual meeting of stockholders.

* There will be lots of media attention and speculation about what happens next for Yahoo. We ask that you put the rumors and speculation aside and stay focused on the business at hand. We are at a very important time in our company's history.

* Yahoo is strategically positioned for accelerating growth and profitability because of our powerful combination of assets: our global brand and scale, unmatched audiences, global leadership in online advertising, strategic positions in Asia, leadership in mobile and emerging markets, and world-class people and technology.

* The company continues to execute well against its strategic and financial plan.

* Our board has explored, and continues to explore, a variety of strategic alternatives and remains committed to considering any alternative intended to maximize stockholder value.

* We'll do our best to continue to update you as new information becomes available, but please remember we are subject to various legal restrictions on what we can say, and when we can say it, as we work through this situation.

Thank you again for your continued hard work.

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9945766-7.html

Billion dollar buyout: CBS saves CNet from activist investors

2008-05-15T10:54:00.000-05:00

CBS is buying CNet Networks - the web publisher behind ZDNet, gamespot.com, tv.com, mp3.com, news.com and techrepublic. These sites will now be combined with CBS's websites.

CBS is paying $1.8bn for CNet - a 44 per cent premium on its share price. The combined properties will have 54 million unique users per month in the US and 200 million worldwide.

Quincy Smith, president of CBS Interactive, said: "The core businesses of CNET Networks and CBS Interactive represent near perfect category symmetry in premium online content". He said the deal would allow the two companies to "build new verticals" as well as grow their existing businesses.

The deal is good news for CNet which has been under pressure from shareholders. In January two institutional investors were pushing to get extra people on the board of directors to reverse CNet's falling share price which has been on the slide since January 2006.

CBS has also been criticised for "not getting the net" - its early stategy of driving viewers to one site - CBS.com - were abandoned for a more shotgun approach.

CBS did a round of deals with various web publishers including AOL, Bebo, Comcast, Joost and CNet in 2007 to get its shows distributed more widely online. CBS also bought London based music site last.fm for $280m in 2007.

CNet's board has unanimously approved the offer and recomends CNet shareholders do the same. It is expected to close in the third quarter.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/15/cbs_buys_cnet/

Yahoo! Icahn! launches! proxy! war!

2008-05-15T10:51:00.002-05:00

Yahoo! might not have escaped Microsoft's clutches after all. But don't hold your breath

Even though he admits he knows nothing about technology or Silicon Valley, activist investor Carl Icahn has confirmed he will fight to take over Yahoo!'s board of directors in order to force through a takeover by Microsoft.

Icahn, who succeeded in getting board seats at Motorola, today named the ten people he would like to see replace Yahoo's current board of directors.

He described Yahoo!'s recent decision to reject Microsoft's offer for the company as "irrational". The letter, addressed to Yahoo!'s chairman Roy Bostock, said: "It is clear to me that the board of directors of Yahoo has acted irrationally and lost the faith of shareholders and Microsoft. It is quite obvious that Microsoft’s bid of $33 per share is a superior alternative to Yahoo’s prospects on a standalone basis." He said that he, and many shareholders, believed that a combined Microsoft/Yahoo would be a dynamic company and strong enough to compete with Google.

Icahn has now bought 59m Yahoo! shares and asked the Federal Trade Commission for clearance to acquire up to $2.5bn of Yahoo! stock.

What is not clear from the letter is whether Icahn has spoken to Steve Ballmer or anyone else at Microsoft. Microsoft withdrew its offer of $47.5bn because Yahoo! demanded another $5bn. In his letter Ballmer ruled out taking the offer directly to Yahoo! shareholders - the strategy which Icahn is now banking on, and according to insiders the company has moved on. Rots of Ruck, Carl, baby.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/15/yahoo_proxy_battle/

Apple's HBO deal means shift in iTunes pricing; Whatever the market will pay

2008-05-14T10:06:00.001-05:00

Tough-guy Tony Soprano and the frisky femmes from "Sex and the City" are now available for viewing for non-HBO subscribers through download purchases on Apple's online iTunes store, the companies announced Tuesday.

The agreement, which includes different prices for TV shows, marks a shift for the Cupertino company, which has resisted pressure from the entertainment industry to change its pricing model.

HBO episodes from "Sex and the City," "The Wire" and "Flight of the Conchords" will cost $1.99 per episode, the iTunes standard price for individual TV shows. But other shows - "The Sopranos," "Deadwood" and "Rome" - will command premium prices of $2.99 per episode.

The pricing shift represents the reality that not all content is equal, said Rob Enderle, founder and principal analyst at the Enderle Group, a technology consulting firm.

"I think this is the way it will go," he said. Such a system could eventually pave the way for consumers to download movies while they are still in theaters. "Maybe a first-time movie will sell for $30. It's not going to sell for $2," Enderle said.

Apple CEO Jobs has resisted such price variations for fear of driving costs too high. "He thinks the content people are clueless, and he wants to make sure they don't destroy the market. But there has to be a balance," Enderle said.

Music downloads, though, most likely won't see price variations. "They are competing with subscriptions. They can't allow music to go up," he said.

HBO and Apple hope to benefit from the buzz around the "Sex and the City" movie, which opens in theaters May 30. All 94 episodes from the show's six seasons will be available through iTunes.

http://www.mercurynews.com/businessheadlines/ci_9253750

MySpace wins bumper spam payout

2008-05-14T10:04:00.001-05:00

MySpace has won a $234m (£120m) legal judgement over junk messages sent to members of the social networking site.

Victory in the case was awarded to MySpace after Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines, the men behind the junk mail, failed to show up in court. The judgement is thought to be the largest ever given against senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail. However, anti-spam experts said MySpace had little chance of getting the cash it sought.

"Anybody who's been thinking about engaging in spam are going to say 'Wow, I better not go there,'" said Hemanshu Nigam, MySpace chief security officer to AP.

"Spammers don't want to be prosecuted. They are there to make money. It's our job to send a message to stop them," he added.

The two junk mailers worked together to create MySpace accounts or took over existing ones by stealing passwords.

Using these accounts the pair e-mailed MySpace members to make the mail look like it came from trusted friends. Typically the e-mail asked recipients to view a video or visit a website.

"When you go there, they were making money trying to sell you something or making money based on hits or trying to sell ringtones," said Mr Nigam.

MySpace said the duo sent 735,925 messages to its members.

In court papers, MySpace said sending the junk mail cost it money and generated complaints from hundreds of users. MySpace also said that some of the external websites contained pornographic material, potentially harming teenagers who use MySpace.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7399868.stm

Silicon Valley opens a Texas Branch: HP pays $13.9bn for EDS

2008-05-13T11:48:00.001-05:00

Updated Hewlett Packard has bought EDS for $13.9bn, doubling its services business at a stroke. The Silicon Valley giant will pay $25 a share for Texas-based EDS, over 25 per cent more than the services firm's shares were trading at when news of the deal first leaked yesterday.

It will finance the deal through a combination of cash on hand and new debt. HP's had $9.9bn cash in the bank at the end of last quarter. The price is still barely half the size of HP's Compaq buy back in 2001.

EDS will become a business group within HP – branded EDS - an HP Company. The unit will be headed by EDS boss Ron Rittenmeyer, who also joins HP’s executive council. He will report direct to HP boss Mark Hurd.

Once the deal is concluded, HP will have a services business with revenues of $38bn a year and 210,000 employees. It will be in a strong second place in the IT services market behind IT leader IBM.

While EDS has dragged itself away from the abyss it was staring into a few years back, its financial performance has not exactly been stellar. Asked whether he thought HP could drag up EDS’ performance further, Hurd said “We wouldn’t do the deal if we didn’t think we had opportunity to improve the operating level that EDS currently has."

HP is banking on squeezing more value out of the combined firm using the trusty two-pronged weapon of synergy and leverage. Just that alone would deliver shareholder value, according to Hurd. If the companies can use the deal to grow their revenues beyond their existing rates, that would complete the “triumph” he said.

On job cuts, EDS' Rittenmeyer said the firms had very little overlap. He added EDS was already cutting its workforce and this would continue, but added that as part of a bigger company there would be more opportunities for employees. The ones that aren’t laid off obviously.

Hurd delivered on expectations that he would be relying on using machines to replace people to boost margins, saying that every time the firm automated server management, a datacentre, etc, that there was a “cost effect” as well as a “customer delight effect.”

Asked where the deal left TSG boss Ann Livermore, Hurd said “it’s early, but she should be in her office real quick.” Later he elaborated, saying that Livermore would remain in charge of TSG, and the deal essentially consisted of HP “putting our outsourcing business into EDS.”

“You should think of this as the bulk of of HP being operationally unaffected,” he claimed.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/13/hp_buys_eds/

Doom and Gloom: Sprint Nextel Profits Nosedive

2008-05-13T11:45:00.001-05:00

Sprint Nextel has received plenty of attention recently for its plans to roll out a new kind of high-speed wireless Internet service. But in light of its earnings report on Monday, some analysts are saying that what it needs more is customers.

Sprint, the nation’s No. 3 carrier, is facing stiff competition from AT&T and Verizon Wireless after its floundering merger with Nextel. In the first quarter, the company lost 1.1 million subscribers; the total number dropped to 52.8 million. Churn, or customer turnover — a measure of how unhappy customers are — is on the rise, climbing to 2.45 percent from 2.3 percent in the previous quarter.

To make matters worse, said Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company, Sprint is losing its best and biggest-spending customers, which will only make it harder to turn the company around.

“Sprint’s management is taking an admirably sober approach, and it is at least talking about the core issues — lax credit standards, high involuntary churn, lack of a compelling consumer value proposition, weak customer service, a subpar network, and, well, you get the idea,” Mr. Moffett wrote in a research report. “There’s a lot wrong. But even if they work on this daunting list of problems, new problems keep intruding.”

Daniel R. Hesse, Sprint’s new chief executive, was candid about the company’s customer service issues, which have persisted for more than a year. “The issues haven’t changed,” he told analysts on a conference call after the release of the earnings report.

But whatever steps Hesse has taken have not yet been enough to stem the tide of losses that has plagued Sprint for more than a year. The company said it had a loss in the first quarter of $505 million, or 18 cents a share, compared with a loss of $211 million, or 18 cents a share in the period a year earlier. This year’s number included one-time costs related to Sprint’s merger with Nextel in 2005, which so far has proved to be a costly failure for the two companies.

Without the charges, Sprint had first-quarter income of 4 cents a share, compared with 18 cents a year ago. That was above the expectations of Wall Street analysts, who had expected a profit of 2 cents a share and revenue of $9.4 billion, according to a survey of 26 analysts by Thomson Reuters.

The company said revenue fell 8 percent, to $9.33 billion from $10.09 billion in the first quarter of 2007.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/technology/13sprint.html?ref=technology

And now for something completely different: Drunk Darth Vader escapes jail sentence

2008-05-13T11:42:00.001-05:00

Arwel Wynne Hughes was given a suspended sentence at Holyhead Magistrates Court after he attacked the founders of Britain's first Jedi church.

The 27-year-old was dressed in a black bin-bag and Darth Vader's trademark shiny black helmet when he leapt over a garden fence in Holyhead and proceeded to attack two Star Wars fans with a metal crutch.

"Darth Vader! Jedis!" Hughes shouted as he approached.

Jedi church founder Barney Jones — also known as Master Jonba Hehol – was hit over the head and Mr Jones' 18-year-old cousin, Michael Jones — or Master Mormi Hehol – suffered a bruised thigh in the March 25 attack.

Hughes claimed he couldn't remember the incident, having drunk the best part of a 10-litre box of wine beforehand. But the incident was recorded on a video camera that the cousins had set up to film themselves in a light saber battle.

Frances Jones, Hughes' lawyer, told the court: "He knows his behaviour was wrong and didn't want it to happen but he has no recollection of it."

District Judge Andrew Shaw sentenced Hughes to two months in jail but suspended the sentence for one year. He also ordered Hughes to pay £100 to each of his victims and £60 in court costs.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/1952260/
Drunk-Darth-Vader-escapes-jail-sentence.html

Will Jobs launch the iPlay in June?

2008-05-12T13:46:00.000-05:00

The web is alive with rumours that Steve Jobs is going to stand before the world and deliver the much anticipated 3G iPhone on 9 June.

But what if there's something even more exciting unveiled? What if it is Apple's first real foray into the mobile gaming market that Jobs actually holds up to the amazed gasps of the globe's press?

Cue rumours of the "iPlay", a handheld gaming console that builds on the capabilities of both the iPod and iPhone.

The rumours stem from MacRumours' interpretation of website Switch To A Mac's prediction last month that Apple will announce the 3G iPhone in May, and Jobs will show off a completely different mobile device at June's Worldwide Developers Conference.

Could this be an Apple-flavoured handheld console to take on the likes of the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS Lite?

Apple has the name, it will just need a brilliant design and fantastic third party apps, and where better to get people on board than the 2008 world wide developers conference, where the aforementioned keynote will be given?

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/14602/15626/iPlay-handheld-
games-console-Apple.phtml

Powerset Debuts With Search of Wikipedia

2008-05-12T13:45:00.000-05:00

Powerset is undoubtedly among the most ballyhooed startups in Silicon Valley. The company’s mission is as improbable as it is daring: just like like Google did a decade ago, Powerset wants to come up with a better way to search.

On Monday, the company will make its public debut, opening up to the masses its search engine, which uses “natural language” to organize and search documents. But Powerset won’t be searching the entire Web, at least not initially. In its debut, it will be confined to Wikipedia.

By using language rather than keywords, Powerset’s demos suggest the company has developed powerful new capabilities. Powerset created an index of Wikipedia by studying the meaning of entire sentences rather than the relationship between words. Similarly, it allows users to type queries as fully formed questions. That allows it to do certain things that many search engines cannot do.

Ask “Who did Henry VIII marry?” or “What did the FDA ban?” or “What did Bill Clinton sign?” and Powerset will come up with remarkably good answers. (Incidentally, Google does a decent job of answering the first of these questions but not the other two.) Powerset also has other nifty features, like its ability to create mini-dossiers that summarize the information it finds and to take users directly to a section of a document that is most relevant to their search.

But Powerset remains a long way off from its promise and faces a seemingly intractable problem: for a very large fraction, if not the vast majority, of searches, keywords work just fine.

“They have a new and interesting technology that most people don’t really need right now,” said Danny Sullivan, a search expert and editor of Search Engine Land. Mr. Sullivan also said that analyzing the meaning of pages, as Powerset does, demands so much computing power that the company is unlikely to be able to index the entire Web any time soon.

Powerset is well aware of that and plans to increase its scope gradually by indexing other “data sets” beyond Wikipedia. News articles and blog posts are likely to be next, the company said.

Given Powerset’s combination of usefulness and limited appeal, it is not surprising that the company is unveiling its product amid rumors that it may be up for sale, with Microsoft mentioned as one possible buyer.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/powerset-debuts-with-search-of-wikipedia/?hp

Windows Cockup: XP SP3 sends PCs into endless reboot

2008-05-09T10:56:00.000-05:00

Microsoft's service pack three (SP3) for Windows XP has caused havoc on hundreds of PCs, just hours after it was released as an automatic update.

Angry customers have vented their spleen on the firm's Windows XP message board, posting complaints that include spontaneous PC reboots and system crashes after the service pack installs.

Poster Dan said: "I installed SP3 this morning but when rebooting it loops between startup screen and restarting screen. I can boot into safe mode. Is uninstalling XP service pack 3 the only resolution?"

Doug W complained: "After three attempts [to install XP SP3] with different configurations each time, System Restore was the only way to get me out of deep shit."

Similar problems were reported by frustrated customers throughout the message board.

Microsoft finally released XP SP3 on Tuesday this week. It was supposed to be available last week, but an eleventh hour FAIL between the service pack and its point-of-sale application – Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) – forced Microsoft to put the cork back in the bottle while it sorted out the problem.

The cock-up also affected Windows Vista SP1.

Earlier this week Microsoft said it had deployed a band-aid filter for the automatic Windows Update to block RMS customers from getting the service packs while it scurries to fix the glitch.

Whether the latest issues will be patched remains to be seen. But it's likely the Microsoft Windows teams will spit out further updates to address the system reboots and crashes being reported in XP SP3.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/09/windows_xp_sp3_reboots_crashes/

After the Yahoo abortion is Microsoft looking at $15bn takeover of Facebook?

2008-05-08T15:04:00.000-05:00

Some people just don’t know when enough is enough. Microsoft is believed to have approached Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, over a possible acquisition of the social networking site.

It is believed that Microsoft has sought to gauge Facebook’s level of interest about a potential bid after $47.5 billion (£24.3 billion) takeover talks with Yahoo!, the online search engine, failed on Saturday. It is not thought that there are any active talks between Microsoft and Facebook.

In October, Microsoft took a $240 million stake in Facebook, which valued the site at about $15 billion. Although Mr Zuckerberg has resisted selling the entire company, indicating instead that he would prefer to float the group, it is not known what his response to Microsoft has been.

Any bid to take over the social networking site would attract the wrath of Facebook's staunchly anti-Microsoft community

In March, Li Ka-shing, one of Asia’s most successful investors, doubled his stake in Facebook, underlining the site’s implied value of $15 billion. The site is regarded as a prize asset because of the loyalty of its 70 million users.

The Hong Kong billionaire’s investment was made through the Li Ka-shing Foundation, which spent $60 million to increase his stake to 0.8 per cent of the company. That matches the $60 million that he invested last year and is valued on the same terms as the $240 million stake that Microsoft took in October.

In previous rounds dating to 2004, Facebook has taken about $40.7 million from venture capital investors, including Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and former chief executive, Accel Partners, Greylock Partners and Meritech Capital Partners. Facebook competes with the larger MySpace, which has 100 million users. It is thought that Mr Zuckerberg intends to prepare his company for flotation.

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, parent company of The Times and owner of MySpace, has, in the past, ruled out buying Facebook, saying that it was overvalued. News Corp bought MySpace for $580 million in 2005.

Microsoft is looking for an alternative acquisition after Steve Ballmer, its chief executive, walked away from Yahoo! on Saturday.

Shares in Microsoft closed at $29.63, down nearly 7 cents, in New York last night. Microsoft and Facebook did not immediately return calls.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article3890497.ece

Jobs forced into iPhone contracts U-turn

2008-05-08T15:02:00.000-05:00

Italy has become the first country to sell the iPhone on a non-exclusive basis, suggesting that Jobs' strategy of tying its device to one network in each territory may be unravelling.

This morning Vodafone and Telecom Italia announced that they had both won contracts to bring the iPhone to Italy later in the year - ending a year-long stretch in which only one operator had the right to the iPhone in each country.

Vodafone also said it had won the right to distribute the device in nine other countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and India - a mobile market which is growing rapidly, but where the majority of customers are pre-pay rather than contract - a situation that does not suit Apple's revenue model.

Jobs now faces the prospect that operators in other countries may revolt against its onerous terms, which are understood to involve the network sharing 10 per cent of revenues in return for the right distribute the iPhone exclusively for a two-year period.

"This is definitely a sign Jobs is capitulating," Will Draper, an analyst at Execution, said. "The initial model was that Jobs would give the iPhone to a network on an exclusive basis, but in Europe, where you have the likes of Nokia and Sony Ericsson selling sophisticated 3G devices, the iPhone simply isn't seen as such a premium product."

Apple is expected to announce a faster, 3G version of the iPhone next month.

Apple is understood to have shipped 600,000 iPhones to the three European operators which have won contracts to distribute the device - O2 in the UK, Orange in France, and T-Mobile in Germany - but so far demand has been disappointing, analysts said.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article3879419.ece

How to Get Microsoft Office at 91 Percent Off

2008-05-08T15:00:00.000-05:00

J.D. Biersdorfer, who dispenses advice to Times readers on everything electronic, passed on this tip for anyone who is thinking about buying Office Ultimate, the tricked-out version that costs $680.

The semester may be ending, but that doesn’t mean the educational discounts have dried up for the summer — yet. Actively enrolled college students with .edu e-mail addresses (and carrying at least a 0.5-credit course load) have one more day to snag a copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate for a mere $60 at www.theultimatesteal.com. The 91-percent-off deal ends May 16th at 11:59 p.m., and Microsoft has full details for the offer at www.microsoft.com/education/ultimatesteal.mspx.

Here is the really cool part, and I got this straight from the Microsoft senior vice president selling the software, Chris Capossela: anyone with a .edu address can get this deal. Most college alumni offices give their graduates .edu addresses.

(And yes, because we’ll get 100 comments if I don’t mention this: OpenOffice.org has open-source word processing software for free.)

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/08/how-to-get-microsoft-office-at-
91-percent-off/index.html?ref=technology

Windows XP SP3 leaps into the tubes

2008-05-07T10:47:00.000-05:00

Second verse, same as the first

Microsoft is giving the automatic web release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 another go today, after an eleventh hour muck-up ruined its scheduled availability last week.

The truant XP service pack is ready for download via Microsoft's Download Center or alternatively, Windows Update if using Internet Explorer. Here's the ISO CD image file too for good measure while we're trolling hyperlinks.

Microsoft had pulled the mass download last week when it uncovered an incompatibility issue between SP3 and its point-of-sale application, Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS). The issue in question — and they've yet to specify what the problem is — also affects Windows Vista SP1.

Redmond is still apparently knuckling down over the issue. Customers with RMS are being advised against installing either service pack until the error is resolved. In the meantime, it has deployed a band-aide filter for the automatic Windows Update to block RMS users from getting it. Microsoft said a permanent fix is currently in beta and will be available later this month.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/06/windows_xp_sp3_updater_release/

Does Jobs Need A Raise? Apple CEO Out of Top 10 Best Paid CEOs

2008-05-05T10:18:00.000-05:00

It’s official! Steve should ask for a pay raise! According to Forbes, Oracle’s Larry Ellison came first in 2007 as the best paid CEO (although he doesn’t seem to need his salary, since he is no. 14 among the world’s billionaires, with an estimated $25 billion of assets), topping big names such as Apple’s Steve Jobs (no wonder, the poor man is paid $1 for the job!).

The top 10 best paid CEOs are as follows: Larry Ellison (Oracle) - $192.9 million, Nabeeb Gareel (MEMC Electronic Materials) - $79.6 million, John Cambers (Cisco) - $54.8 million, Mark Hurd (HP) - $27.6 million, Jen-Hsun Huang (NVIDIA) - $24.6 million, Samual Palmisano (IBM) - $24.3 million, Wendell Weeks (Corning) - $22.6 million, Joseph Tucci, EMC - $20 million, William Sullivan (Agilent) - $17.4 million, Paul Otellini (Intel) - $16.3 million.

Jobs not only didn’t make it on the top 10 list, but 2007 was far less productive than 2006: this time he took home an estimated $14.6 million in compensation, compared to 2006 when he took compensations estimated at $646 million (oh, it’s nice to have stocks!).

The secret to making it to Forbes' top list: don’t lose your job! Yahoo’s former Chief Executive Officer Terry Semel didn’t make it this year, and neither did Michael Dell, the founder of Dell, who is currently working hard to bring Dell to the light (however, he does have some pretty good savings, in case things don’t work out so well; Forbes estimated his value at $16 billion, making him the 40th richest person in the world).

Jeff Bezos from Amazon.com was last year’s best performing boss, with an annualized total return during his career with the company of 40%, although his earning got him a number 467 spot. However, he does rank 110th in the world’s billionaire list, Forbes says, thanks to his 24% of the company’s stock.

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Steve_Jobs_Needs_A_Raise_Apple_
CEO_Out_of_Top_10_Best_Paid_CEOs_17106.html

Yahoo Ready For A Black Monday

2008-05-05T10:15:00.002-05:00

As everyone digests yesterday’s extraordinary news around Microsoft’s withdrawal of their Yahoo bid, the big rumor around the valley is that Yahoo is frantically trying to negotiate a deal with Google to outsource search advertising and get it announced before the markets open tomorrow and the stock nosedives

It’s not clear that Google still wants to do such a deal now that the immediate threat of a Microsoft/Yahoo deal is gone. The reason - the almost certain regulatory review (even Congress has taken note). And even if they are still willing to talk, Yahoo has lost the lions share of negotiating leverage. That means a lower revenue share, a shorter term deal, etc.

If Yahoo and Google reach a deal, it’s possible they could at least argue for a case that Yahoo’s value should increase to $37/share (but the markets won’t buy it): based on analyst projections, Yahoo could increase cash flow by $1 billion or more by outsourcing, and increase revenue per thousand search queries to as high as $90 from the current $40 or so. Combine that with massive headcount reductions (Yahoo won’t need their search marketing employees any more, possibly 2,000 employees), and Yahoo could have short term bottom line gains of well $1.2 billion or more/year.

With a trailing P/E of almost 40, That extra cash could, theoretically, boost their market cap by more than enough to reach their goal of $37/share.

That’s the theory anyway. In reality, even if a deal is announced, the markets will factor in the risk of regulatory veto, as well as the long term negative effects of giving away the search marketing business to their biggest competitor.

And Yahoo’s true market value today remains in the $19/share range, or about $26 billion, now that the Microsoft crutch has ben removed. A good chunk of that - $10 billion or so - is actually from their Alibaba and Yahoo Japan holdings.

So Yahoo and Google may do a deal or they may not - but either way it isn’t going to help Yahoo’s share price as much as they hope.

Angry Shareholders

We also expect Yahoo to announce their delayed annual shareholder meeting early this week, and actually hold it as early as late June. When it’s announced, shareholders have ten days to propose an alternate slate of board members. Microsoft says they are sitting on the sidelines, but a group of angry stockholders may now emboldened enough to make their own effort to change company management.

To say that shareholders are angry is an understatement. They made it clear to anyone who’d talk to them that they would be more than happy with Microsoft’s $33/share final offer. Legg Mason, Capital Research, T. Rowe Price and others all reportedly strongly wanted the Microsoft deal to happen.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/04/yahoo-prepares-for-a-black-monday/

America's grim newspaper story

2008-05-05T10:12:00.000-05:00

Extra, extra, read all about it. Newspaper circulations in freefall. Readers desert to the internet. Abandon hope, all ye who enter print journalism.

Newspaper circulation has been dropping steadily in most of the developed world for many years, but the armageddonists are firmly in the ascendancy, particularly in the US, where they have taken to specifying a date on which the last newspaper will be printed in the country. (October 2044 on current trends, according to the American Journalism Review.)

The latest round of grim circulation data, which was published by the Audit Bureau of Circulations this week, showed such a sharp acceleration in the downtrend that the date might have to be brought forward. The ABC survey of 534 of the largest daily newspapers found a 3.6 per cent decline in the six months to 31 March, compared to the same period a year ago. In the previous six-month period, the year-on-year decline was 2.6 per cent. A year ago it was 2.1 per cent. Papers in the biggest metropolitan areas are hurting most; Sunday editions are dropping most steeply of all. The august New York Times, which is distributed across the country, lost 9.3 per cent of its Sunday readership in the last six months. The figures looked bad enough to make newspaper executives choke on their cereals when they appeared in yesterday's editions.

Only here's the real scoop: this is not all bad news for the industry, and in many cases, the figures are exactly what managers wanted and worked towards.

Eh? Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, a Florida school for journalists, explains that - while many former newspaper readers are indeed now satisfied getting their news from the internet – this is only part of the story.

"It is 50-50 between the rise of the internet and what Gary Pruitt, chief executive of [the regional newspaper company] McClatchy described last week as 'managed circulation reduction'. He said that they were no longer sending papers out into the boondocks, where distribution is expensive and it is an area that advertisers do not really care about."

n short, newspaper executives are making a hard-headed judgement that not all readers are created equal, at least not in the eyes of advertisers.

"There is a lot of 'ego circulation', but with newsprint prices going up, with transportation costs going up, anyone looking at the business model will say that there are copies that they don't have to print," says one analyst at a fund management firm. "Paid newsstand sales and home delivery, these are the prized readers. Now companies are thinking about trimming superfluous distribution. Many companies have previously been reluctant to touch circulation, because all it does is throw gasoline on the fire. They are all being accused of being dinosaurs, of having their heads in the sand. Deliberately cutting back on circulation simply generates another story about how bad the business is, but it can in fact be a much more rational business decision."

The New York Times, for example, said its Sunday sales drop was deliberate, since it was not renewing special offers such as giving the paper away to daily subscribers. Throughout the industry, over the past few months, executives have been explaining that saving money – and therefore saving newspapers – requires sacrificing some readers.

No less a person than Rupert Murdoch was persuaded. When he was bidding for The Wall Street Journal, the nation's No 2 paper by circulation, he said he expected to scrap subscription fees for the paper's website (whose paying subscribers are included in the ABC figures), and believed he would make up the lost revenue when advertisers flocked to reach the new, bigger audience. When he finally got his hands on the paper, four months ago, it was clear that more readers would not equal more revenue, and he declared the subscription fees will stay.

Not all industry-watchers are convinced that ditching less profitable readers works in the long run if it means more people fall out of the habit of reading a paper, just as other cost-cutting measures could also prove short-sighted. The New York Times is on the verge of making its first newsroom redundancies; its sister paper The Boston Globe is typical among smaller papers cutting back on overseas reporters. In the past two years, both the Times and the Journal have shaved inches off the size of the paper to reduce newsprint costs.

"The cuts made at so many papers, in the news staff and in the space dedicated to news, may not be good for the business over time," says the Poynter Institute's Mr Edmonds. "This perception about whether the industry is 'hot or not' extends to media buyers, and they are under pressure to move advertising budgets from old media to new media."

Optimists point out that former newspaper readers are not straying very far. In many cases, they are simply browsing the paper on the web for free. That is painful as far as circulation revenues goes, but it also presents an opportunity. "Advertising rates on the internet are, for the most part, up, and newspaper websites are usually the number one or number two most trafficked sites in their region, which bodes well for the economic upturn," says the fund management firm analyst. "It's just that it is harder to identify in a cyclical downturn when it is difficult for your real estate and employment advertising to be up."

Of course, there is the economic downturn to navigate first, and it is already looking brutal for some in the newspaper industry. Sam Zell, the property magnate who took over Tribune Group, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times last year, has found himself in danger of defaulting on his massive debts unless he sells some smaller papers, and he has told staff to brace for cuts. Circulation and advertising revenues are falling faster than he and his backers budgeted for little more than a year ago. Credit rating agencies downgraded the creditworthiness of several other newspaper companies in the past few weeks, and warned that they will likely downgrade still more.

It will take time to see who is right, the armageddonists or the newspaper executives who are claiming "managed reduction". Paul Ginocchio, analyst at Deutsche Bank, says it will take another year of adjustment before the ABC figures show the "true" rate of readership decline, but he urged investors to treat the sector with extreme caution. "We think the industry was expecting an improvement in trend and thus we view this result with some degree of alarm."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/
americas-grim-newspaper-story-818071.html

Yahoo: Ballmer Blew It

2008-05-04T17:00:00.000-05:00

Finally Ballmer’s body has developed a resistance to whatever meds he’s been overdosing on.. One investor summed up what is likely to be a somber reaction among Microsoft’s supporters on Wall Street as the implications of the abandoned Yahoo talks sink in: “This is a black eye for Steve Ballmer.”

In spite of offering what appeared to be an overwhelming takeover premium and spending three months stalking Yahoo, the Microsoft chief executive has been left empty-handed, at least for now.

Mr Ballmer was already working over the weekend to counter the idea that the failure of the deal will leave his company’s internet strategy in disarray.

“Although the acquisition of Yahoo would have accelerated our ability to deliver on our strategy in advertising and online services,

“I remain confident that we can achieve our goals without Yahoo,” he wrote in an e-mail to employees on Saturday.

Yet some observers were already claiming the failure represented a big setback in Microsoft’s efforts to create a counterweight to Google in the fast-growing internet advertising business.

“It’s clearly a disappointment,” said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising group WPP, who had earlier welcomed the idea of a Microsoft-Yahoo deal as the best chance of creating a significant rival.

The failure would confirm Google’s position as the dominant online advertising business, he added. For a company that has historically refused to contemplate big mergers, seeing them as a move best left to companies in more mature industries with no other options to grow, the unsolicited bid was an indication of Microsoft’s growing sense of urgency in its attempts to catch the search giant.

In spite of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in its own search business over the past five years, Microsoft has actually lost ground in the search business against its arch-rival.

That dented the software company’s confidence in its ability to catch up on its own and contradicted its familiar “fast-follower” strategy, which in the past has seen it often catch up with market leaders by copying their approach, despite entering markets late.

Other recent discussions with AOL and MySpace could lead to alternative deals to boost Microsoft’s presence online.

However, a combination of the Microsoft and AOL online advertising activities would not represent the sort of balance to Google that a Microsoft/Yahoo deal would have, said Mr Sorrell.

For Mr Ballmer, meanwhile, the abandonment of the Yahoo deal represents one of the most prominent failures of his tenure as CEO..

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ecfbef38-1a0a-11dd-ba02-0000779fd2ac.htm

WSJ: Miscrosoft Pulls The Bad Cop / Not-So-Bad Cop Routine

2008-05-02T10:31:00.000-05:00

Microsoft is now leaning towards a hostile takeover of Yahoo, the Wall Street Journal reports today, citing "people familiar with the matter." But it also quotes CEO Steve Ballmer as saying, sure, he can organically build a competitive ad network without Yahoo -- it "could just take more time." And, believe me, I'm as willing as ever to buy Yahoo for a fair price.

Phew. So as of late last night, anyway, WSJ's bad-cop sources were signaling that a newly-empowered Ballmer is inclined to take the gloves off and the man himself wants us to know he can take it or leave it and is not married to a price that may have made sense only three months ago -- sorry for the misunderstanding.

In a speech to staff -- comments served up to WSJ by a spokesman -- Ballmer left a little wiggle room about not going a dime above the original and only official offer of roughly $29.

The WSJ reports that Ballmer told the assembled he wouldn't pay "a dime above" what he thought Yahoo was worth. "I will go to what I think it's worth if that gets a deal done, Ballmer was quoted as saying.

Microsoftees this week privately indicated a willingness to go as high as $33. Yahooligans are looking for at least $35. First quarter earnings are conveniently out already so the cards, as they say, are all on the table.

Anyone else feel the room getting a little smaller?

But wait -- there's more.

Reuters reports that a non-exclusive partnership that would involve Yahoo carrying Google advertising alongside Yahoo's Web search results could be announced next week. That wouldn't preclude a Microhoo deal, but it could muddy the waters even more -- and it sure makes it look like Yahoo isn't getting the vapors yet over a possible tie-up with Microsoft.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/05/wsj-miscrosoft.html

Your personal data just got permanently cached at the US border

2008-05-02T10:29:00.001-05:00

Fact or fiction? US Feds won't say

Now that US customs agents have unfettered access to laptops and other electronic devices at borders, a coalition of travel groups, civil liberties advocates and technologists is calling on Congress to rein in the Department of Homeland Security's search and seizure practices. They're also providing practical advice on how to prevent trade secrets and other sensitive data from being breached.

In a letter dated Thursday, the group, which includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union and the Business Travel Coalition, called on the House Committee on Homeland Security to ensure searches aren't arbitrary or overly invasive. They also urged the passage of legislation outlawing abusive searches.

The letter comes 10 days after a US appeals court ruled Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have the right to rummage through electronic devices even if they have no reason to suspect the hardware holds illegal contents. Not only are they free to view the files during passage; they are also permitted to copy the entire contents of a device. There are no stated policies about what can and can't be done with the data.

Over the past few months, several news reports have raised eyebrows after detailing border searches that involved electronic devices. The best known of them is this story from The Washington Post, which recounted the experiences of individuals who were forced to reveal data on cell phones and laptop devices when passing through US borders. One individual even reported some of the call history on her cell phone had been deleted.

"The Fourth Amendment protects us all against unreasonable government intrusions," the letter, which was also signed by the Center for Democracy and Technology and security expert Bruce Schneier, states. "But this guarantee means nothing if CBP can arbitrarily search and seize our digital information at the border and indefinitely store and reuse it."

Several of the groups are also providing advice to US-bound travelers carrying electronic devices. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives is encouraging members to remove photos, financial information and other personal data before leaving home. This is good advice even if you're not traveling to the US. There is no reason to store five years worth of email on a portable machine.

In this posting, the EFF agrees that laptops, cell phones, digital cameras and other gizmos should be cleaned of any sensitive information. Then, after passing through customs, travelers can download the data they need, work on it, transmit it back and then digitally destroy the files before returning.

The post also urges the use of strong encryption to scramble sensitive data, although it warns this approach is by no means perfect. For one thing, CBP agents are free to deny entry to travelers who refuse to divulge their passwords. They may also be able to seize the laptop.

If it sounds like a lot of work, consider this: so far, the federal government has refused to reveal any information about border searches, including what it does with the electronic data it seizes. Under the circumstances, there's no way of knowing what will happen to, say, source code or company memos that may get confiscated. Or the email sent to your lawyer.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/01/electronic_searches_at_us_borders/

iPhone: Jobs’ bid for total world domination?

2008-05-01T11:42:00.000-05:00

Even as Research in Motion and Palm target Apple's touch-sensitive wonder phone, the broad outlines of Steve Jobs' grand strategy for wireless domination are coming into focus. Apple is knitting together a broad coalition of companies around a vision of computing that goes far beyond today's hot-selling iPhone and toward a future that combines wireless broadband and touch-sensitive interfaces with built-in motion sensors.

Cisco is experimenting with software that will allow users to "flick" documents from their iPhones to their desktop computers. Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ), which supplies the processors for Apple's desktop and laptop computers, is experimenting with ways to tie motion sensors to maps, allowing users to "fly" through the landscape. Electronic Arts and Sega are building games that can be manipulated by players waving their phones through the air.

And more companies are piling in, too, drawn by a promise from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to pump $100 million into start-ups building software ready to take advantage of the iPhone's quirky assortment of capabilities.

All of this hints that Jobs and team Apple are thinking two moves ahead even as they plot the rollout of a third-generation version of the iPhone. Analysts are betting the new phones will be unveiled June 9 at the annual Apple Worldwide Developer's Conference in San Francisco, or later in June, on the first anniversary of the original iPhone's launch.

Most analysts believe the new phones will add higher-speed connections to wireless carriers and satellite-navigation capabilities to the phone/media player/digital camera/Web browsing gizmo.

Touch sensitivity has been a part of notebook computers for many years, thanks to the trackpad. But on smaller devices where there is no room for a keypad or a wide screen, building a smart, touch-sensitive interface is key, argues Roger Kay, president of tech-tracker Endpoint Technologies. "Touch gives you more virtual real estate--you feel like you can see more because you can zoom in and out," Kay says.

Meanwhile, it's already possible to get glimpses of an even wider lineup of devices built around the iPhone's gesture-based interface. A flurry of patents filed by Apple in recent years outline an increasingly detailed vision for the future of wireless gizmos. The company is also quietly snapping up technology that will allow it to build powerful--and power-sipping--wireless devices . The end game: futuristic gizmos controlled by gestures that are tied wirelessly to the world around them, protected by a broad portfolio of patents, and perhaps even running proprietary Apple silicon.

Expect more to come, with Apple opening up the ability to write applications for the iPhone to outside software developers. Developers were previously limited to working with the Web browser built into the phone. Now developers will be able to use tools familiar to any OS X developer, such as Instruments, Xcode and Interface builder, alongside a new tool, the iPhone simulator, to craft applications. That means the iPhone, as well as the iPod Touch, will be moving in unexpected new directions, even as Apple's Steve Jobs works on a few surprises of his own.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/30/apple-iphone-3g-tech-wire-cx_bc_0501apple.html

Happy 15th B-Day World Wide Web!

2008-04-30T09:51:00.001-05:00

Light those 15 candles! Now close your eyes and make a wish. The World Wide Web has many birthdays. March 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee handed his boss a short document entitled Information Management: a Proposal, is one.

Christmas of the following year, when the Web was up and running on two computers, is another. But perhaps the most important Web anniversary of all is 30 April 1993.

That's the day that Cern put the web in the public domain, thereby ensuring that the world would have a single system for accessing the Internet, instead of a Microsoft Web, a Macintosh Web and who knows, perhaps even an Amstrad Web.

Today, it is hard to imagine a world without the web, yet well into the 1990s, internet access was the reserve of the privileged few, mainly academics.

Although the internet had been around since the 1970s, accessing documents on remote computers required the mastery of complex protocols. Scientists had been doing that for years, and at Cern, the European laboratory for particle physics in Geneva, they were particularly adept.

Research centres

To most at Cern, complex protocols were just fine, but to Berners-Lee, there was clearly a need to manage better the digital information available in various databases and distributed across a plethora of computers at Cern and its collaborating universities and research centres around the globe.

Hence the web's March 1989 birthday. "Vague, but exciting" were the words that Berners-Lee's boss, Mike Sendall, scrawled across the top of the proposal document as he encouraged his protégé to continue.

The following year a less vague, but equally exciting, proposal ensued, and Sendall was persuaded to buy two shiny new NeXT computers for Berners-Lee to work on.

In September 1990, they arrived, and by Christmas, the World Wide Web as we know it was up and running with its defining features of the URL, the hypertext mark-up language (html) and the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) all fully defined. Birthday number two.

Berners-Lee's first browser was every bit as powerful as any modern day product, more so in some ways since the web was originally conceived as a two-way medium: Berners-Lee's browser was also an editor.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7375703.stm

No Break in the Microsoft and Yahoo Standoff

2008-04-29T10:35:00.002-05:00

Who’s going to blink first? The deadline that Microsoft imposed on Yahoo to reach a negotiated merger agreement passed three days ago, and the two companies are still not talking.

At a conference at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Wash., its general counsel, Bradford L. Smith, said no meetings had been scheduled between the two companies.

Now all eyes are focused on Microsoft’s next move. The company warned this month that if its April 26 deadline was not met, it would seek to oust Yahoo’s board and take its offer directly to shareholders, perhaps at a lower price. The deadline passed Saturday with no sign that the two sides were negotiating.

Last Wednesday, Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO, raised the possibility that his company would walk away from its offer. A day later, Christopher P. Liddell, the chief financial officer, said Microsoft was not inclined to increase its offer for Yahoo and would decide this week how to proceed. A Microsoft spokesman said Monday evening that no decision had been made.

If Microsoft abandons its pursuit of Yahoo, that company’s shares would probably fall. This would not preclude Microsoft from trying to reach a negotiated deal at a later date.

But many analysts say the most likely step is that Microsoft will initiate a proxy fight, a move that could bring Yahoo to the negotiating table.

A Yahoo spokesman declined to comment. The company has twice rejected Microsoft’s bid, originally valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 a share, calling it too low. But Jerry Yang, Yahoo’s chief executive, said Yahoo was not opposed to a sale to Microsoft at a higher price.

The value of Microsoft’s stock-and-cash offer has fallen to $42.1 billion, with a decline in the company’s share price.

And nobody's said a word about whether or not regulators will let this merger pass.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/technology/29soft.html?ref=technology

When Is a Downgrade a Good Thing?

2008-04-28T20:41:00.000-05:00

Microsoft has spoken. Windows XP's days are numbered, and the clock runs out on June 30, 2008… or does it?

It turns out that creative thinkers at Dell and Lenovo – and reportedly HP – have figured out a way that some customers can continue to get new PCs configured with XP Professional through January 31, 2009.

The key is in what's called "downgrade rights." That is, you can purchase a new PC with Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate, and have it downgraded to XP Professional. This option is not available if you buy a PC with Vista Home Basic or Home Premium, however.

Both Dell and Lenovo clearly describe the downgrade options on their Web sites.

Microsoft is scheduled to release XP Service Pack 3 to the public on Tuesday, April 29.

The moves are apparently independent of Microsoft's own initiatives to keep XP alive a little while longer. For instance, Microsoft recently announced it will make XP available as an operating system for so-called ultra low-cost PCs (ULCPC).

Additionally, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told attendees at its Most Valuable Professionals Summit in Seattle two weeks ago that the company will do what customers demand when it comes to XP.

"We have some customers, a lot of customers using Vista … and we have a lot of customers that are choosing to stay with Windows XP, and as long as those are both important options, we will be sensitive, and we will listen, and we will hear that," Ballmer said. In fact, the company has already extended that cutoff period by five months from January 30, 2008 – the first anniversary of Vista's consumer launch.

In fact, one analyst thinks the new options may be in Microsoft's best interests.

"It does underline that there are customers looking to skip versions of the operating system and it may be an indicator that some may wait for Windows 7," Rob Helm, director of research at Directions on Microsoft, told InternetNews.com. "That puts pressure on Microsoft to get Windows 7 out quicker."

Microsoft has said repeatedly that Windows 7, the next release of Windows after Vista, will ship around three years after Vista shipped – which was January 30, 2007. If the company stays roughly on schedule, that would put Windows 7 out in early 2010.

The company doesn't have a good record of meeting Windows ship dates, however. Vista itself was delayed several times and came out after the crucial Christmas 2006 sales season. So the pressure may be good for both users and Microsoft.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3743446/
When+Is+a+Downgrade+a+Good+Thing.htm

Ballmer to Yahoo: OK You Don’t Want Us? We’ll Buy Someone Else

2008-04-25T09:46:00.000-05:00

Microsoft made one thing clear on its conference call with investors this afternoon: We tech bloggers don’t have to work this weekend.

Otherwise, it offered a cliffhanger. Next week Microsoft will announce whether it will take its bid for Yahoo to its shareholders or drop it entirely.

The company had set a deadline of this Saturday for Yahoo to respond to its offer. So far, despite a few sessions of small talk between executives of the two companies, Yahoo does not appear to be in any sort of mood to get more serious.

On a European trip over the last few days, Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, has made a series of comments that the company might well abandon its bid. And Christopher P. Liddell, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, repeated the threat.

“We will provide updates, as appropriate next week,” he said, saying the company’s options “could include taking an offer to Yahoo shareholders or to withdraw our proposal and focus on other alternatives, both organic and inorganic.” (More on Microsoft’s inorganic chemistry in a minute.)

Mr. Liddell complained that Yahoo is losing value as it dithers about the deal.

“We have been clear, as evidenced by the size of our offer premium, that speed is of the essence,” he said. “Unfortunately, the transaction has been anything but speedy.”

He expressly rejected Yahoo’s arguments that it is worth more than the $31-a-share Microsoft bid.

“The strongest argument I’ve heard as to why we should increase our bid, which is that we can afford to, is not one I favor,” the chief financial officer said.

All this is to be expected, of course. Microsoft certainly has no need to hint it will pay more in absence of other bidders. And it is trying to marshal as many threats to motivate Yahoo as possible, including the prospect of a shareholder revolt when Microsoft pulls away and the possibility that Microsoft might pursue a deal with another company.

That could mean buying AOL from Time Warner, or Ask.com from IAC/Interactive. Or it could try to work out some venture with News Corporation to blend MySpace with its own properties.

All of these companies have been talking to Microsoft and Yahoo over the last three months. So it is certainly possible that a deal may emerge that doesn’t involve Yahoo at all.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/microsofts-new-threat-to-yahoo-
well-buy-someone-else/

How Apple Is Preparing for an iPod Slump

2008-04-25T09:43:00.001-05:00

Jobs has a minor little iPod problem. And he is doing an amazing job of rising above it.

O.K., we should all have this sort of problem. Apple sold 10.6 million iPods in the first three months of 2008. It has a 73 percent share of the music player market in the United States and a growing share abroad.

Still, the number of iPods sold in the quarter grew only 1 percent from the same quarter a year ago. And sales of the low-end iPod Shuffle have been falling sharply. In response, Apple lowered the price of the 1-gigabyte shuffle from $79 to $49, helping to stanch the decline. Apple executives speaking on a conference call Wednesday afternoon gave few details, as is their custom.

For some companies, a mature market and downward pressure on prices could lead to a nasty death spiral. But Apple has used its amazing six-year run with the iPod to nurture enough new business lines that it will be able to withstand a collapse in the MP3-player market as well as can be imagined.

First of all, it has a continuing revenue stream from the iPods that have already been sold because of the iTunes Store. Apple sold $881 million worth of music and accessories in the last quarter. That figure rose 35 percent from a year ago. And the NPD Group now counts Apple as the largest seller of music in the country, ahead of Wal-Mart. Apple, in fact, is on track to have greater revenue from selling music (and accessories) this year than the entire revenue estimated for the Warner Music Group.

Second, Apple has created product upgrades that are so different that they may well appeal to a significant number of iPod users. The iPhone, of course, is a product bundle that –- if you want it — is completely different from a standalone iPod.

Apple is also now putting a lot of emphasis as well on the iPod Touch, which is being touted as much as a platform for pocket Internet access and mobile computing as it is for playing music and videos. Already, sales of the Touch helped Apple increase its revenue from iPods by 8 percent to $1.8 billion in the quarter, compared to that 1 percent increase in unit sales.

The company didn’t say much about iPhone sales on the call, but it did say that the shortage of iPhones in the United States in March resulted from higher-than-anticipated demand. A “significant” number of the 1.7 million iPhones Apple sold in the quarter, the company said, were to people who unlocked them and shipped them to countries in which Apple does not have deals with local carriers. (No news on any new iPhone models, but it did say inventory continues to be tight, a good way to manage things if you are about to introduce a new model.)

Third, and perhaps most significantly, Apple’s entire adventure with the iPod is helping it sell computers, although the magnitude is impossible to calculate. Apple sold 2.3 million Macs in the quarter for $3.5 billion. That is an increase of 51 percent by units and 54 percent by dollars. Not so bad when the economy is more than a little shaky.

Apple’s computer sales have been growing 2 to 3 times as fast as the overall market. But this quarter the company says it grew 3.5 times faster than the PC market overall. What’s going on? Don’t rush to tell me how much easier, safer and more powerful a Mac is than a Windows PC. All that was true a year ago as well, and Mac sales are accelerating.

Microsoft, of course, has fumbled the launch of Windows Vista. But what the analysts call the “halo effect” from the iPod is clearly helping to sell Macs too.

Apple’s retail stores are part of this success story, and they sold 458,000 Macs in the quarter. I don’t think these stores would be as mobbed with tourists and other gawkers if they just sold computers and not iPods and iPhones as well.

When we look at all the companies that have stagnated along with the products that made them successful — from AOL to Microsoft — Apple stands out as one company that has been able to flip its business forward so well that it is in a great position to thrive, even if its iPod problems become more than little.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/how-apple-is-preparing-for-an-ipod-
slump/index.html?ref=technology

Is Microsoft's Ballmer one lame dealmaker? You have to ask?

2008-04-24T10:14:00.001-05:00

What has he been smoking? The bid for Yahoo that helped sink the market value of Microsoft by more than $20 billion in one day in early February is one of the latest in a string of brilliant acquisitions and major investment stakes Microsoft has initiated since CEO Steve Ballmer took over in 2000 that have been punished by the stock market as misjudgments.

"Some learn more quickly than others. It doesn't look like Mr. Ballmer is learning that quickly," says UCLA Anderson School of Management professor Richard Roll, lead author of a study that analyzed 11 years of merger and acquisition announcements by 2,589 CEOs at 1,740 U.S. companies.

Ballmer said Wednesday that Microsoft — which has given Yahoo's board a Saturday deadline to respond to its offer — is standing by its $44.6 billion bid and will "move forward" if Yahoo rejects it, Reuters reported. The original stock-and-cash offer was a 62% premium to where Yahoo had been trading. That is far above the average premium of about 20% for all deals, Roll says, although tech takeovers often carry fat premiums. Microsoft made the generous offer in anticipation of Yahoo's resistance, but when shareholders responded with sticker shock and bid Microsoft's stock price down, it continued a Ballmer pattern.

Of course, market responses can be wrong at predicting the expediency of acquisitions — and this deal is far from over. But studies have found that stock market reaction to an announced deal has a statistical correlation with the eventual operating cash flow, Roll says. Acquiring Yahoo could prove to be a brilliant move by Ballmer, but investors' reaction shows that, at this price, they believe otherwise.

'A very rational move'

Ballmer has his defenders regarding Yahoo. Saikat Chaudhuri, management professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says Microsoft has been criticized for not taking more aggressive steps to compete with Google. "It's a very rational move. Yahoo and Microsoft combined could actually be some force against Google on the Internet," he says.

Roll's study looked at data from 1992-2002. Ballmer, 52, replaced Bill Gates, also 52, as CEO in 2000. At USA TODAY's request, Roll examined Microsoft's acquisitions to the present. Roll has been a leading expert on mergers and acquisitions since he published an influential study 22 years ago, The Hubris Hypothesis of Corporate Takeovers. His data are adjusted using what is known as cumulative abnormal return (CAR). CAR, in this case, is a statistical look at how much a stock price went up or down at the time of the M&A announcement, factoring out other influences such as action in the broader market.

Many CEOs make rookie acquisition mistakes, and the 11-year examination of 2,589 CEOs shows that those who do tend to learn and sharpen their skills because subsequent acquisitions were on average treated by the market as wiser.

Ballmer's first acquisition was software company VerticalNet, and the deal had a negative CAR of 11%, Roll says. His worst decision, as judged by market response, came several months later with the acquisition announcement of Great Plains Software. It had a negative CAR of 23%. The Yahoo deal had an immediate negative CAR of 8%, Roll says. Overall, Ballmer's CAR has been negative 4.6% vs. a positive 2.5% for the average of all CEOs. Ballmer's dealmaking has been improving, albeit gradually, Roll says. From 2003 until the Yahoo deal, he averaged a negative 2.8%.

"He's learned something because he's slowing down the pace of getting hammered," Roll says

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/corporatenews/2008-04-23-ballmer_N.htm

Google (re-)branded world's greatest brand

2008-04-22T13:22:00.000-05:00

Better than pigs' feet

At least one Strategy Boutique believes that Google is the most powerful brand on the planet.

On Monday, Millward Brown released its annual list (PDF) of the world's top 100 brands, and for the second year running, it's convinced that Google is the best of the best.

Millward Brown also says that brands are important. "This year's brand ranking demonstrates the importance of investing in brands, especially in times of market turmoil. Strong brands generate superior returns and protect businesses from risk," said Joanna Seddon, CEO of Millward Brown Optimor, a Sub-Boutique of the Strategy Boutique. "Our data shows that strong brands continue to outperform weak ones in terms of market share and share price during recessions."

With the help of a whalesong CD and a few joss sticks, you too can have a strong brand. But not as strong as Google's. According to the Millard Brown study, based on financial data and interviews with people, the Google brand is now worth $86.1bn. That's a 30 per cent increase from last year. Or at least, a thirty per cent increase from last year's report.

GE grabs the second spot at $71.4bn, with Microsoft just behind at $70.8bn. The top ten also includes IBM ($55.3bn), Apple (up 123 per cent to $55.2bn), and Nokia ($43.9bn). It does not include Miss Ida's Pickled Pigs' Feet.

With "brand value growth" of $187.5bn, the tech industry outperformed all other industries. Twenty-eight tech outfits made the top 100, including HP, Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Verizon, Dell, and BlackBerry.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/22/google_is_worlds_greatest_brand/

Warning sounded on Microsoft and Google's health records landgrab

2008-04-18T14:14:00.000-05:00

Dr Ballmer will market you now

Two leading proponents of electronic health records have urged regulators and governments to wake up to Microsoft and Google's growing interest in storing medical information.

Dr Kenneth Mandl and Dr Isaac Kohane write in the New England Journal of Medicine that the entry of tech behemoths to the healthcare market will bring "seismic change". Pooling vast amounts of sensitive patient information will have a huge impact on research and privacy that is not properly appreciated, they argue.

For example, Microsoft and Google's web-based patient data services aren't covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and don't want to be. A Microsoft health VP told The New York Times: "Philosophically and politically, I am skeptical of the concept of paternalism."

The Act places restrictions and demands checks on companies that hold and share medical data. It was passed in 1996, however, when lawmakers didn't consider that people might turn their most private information over to web advertising brokers.

Microsoft and Google both assert that their service will give people greater control over their own healthcare. It's already happening at pace at some big hospitals, Mandl and Kohane note. At New York Presbyterian, authorities are committed to allowing patients to transfer information to the Microsoft HealthVault.

The pair called on regulators to consider extending oversight to cover their rush into the market, but saw the potential for people to participate more in research

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/18/google_microsoft_health_record/

Switch paves way for super iPods

2008-04-16T12:48:00.001-05:00

The largest iPod currently available can hold about 40,000 songs

A breakthrough in technology could see the memory capacity of devices such as the iPod increase by 150,000 times, Glasgow University researchers claimed.

Two experts said they had developed a molecule-sized switch which means that data storage could be boosted without having to increase the size of devices.

The biggest iPod MP3 player currently available can hold about 40,000 songs.

However, new nanotechnology could theoretically allow users to store millions of video and music tracks. Professor Lee Cronin and Dr Malcolm Kadodwala, from the university's chemistry department, said their work could see 500,000 gigabytes squeezed into a microchip no bigger than a two pence piece.

They increased the storage capacity without enlarging the size of the device by developing a new molecule sized switch.

The microscopic switch - made up of two clusters of molecules positioned just 0.32 nanometres apart - allows scientists to easily manipulate an electrical field.

Professor Cronin said the technology could be used in other devices

The nanotechnology experts said that by placing these switches on a gold or carbon surface, they could fit up to 1bn transistors - the fundamental building blocks of computers and electrical devices - on to a single chip.

This is more than five times the current limit.

The technology could also be used in other electrical devices, such as DVD players, to increase their memory and performance, the scientists claimed.

Professor Cronin said: "What we have done is find a way to potentially increase the data storage capabilities in a radical way.

"This is unprecedented and provides a route to produce new a molecule-based switch that can be easily manipulated using an electric field.

"The fact these switches work on carbon means that they could be embedded in plastic chips so silicon is not needed and the system becomes much more flexible both physically and technologically."

The work was undertaken with colleagues at Daresbury Laboratory in Warrington, using its giant X-ray machine (Synchrotron Radiation Source).

Details of the research are published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7350281.stm

Microsoft Swallows Sidekick-Maker Danger, Buries It Deep In Org Chart Hell

2008-04-16T12:47:00.000-05:00

Microsoft has closed its acquisition of mobile software/platform maker Danger, for which it reportedly spent $500 million.

Danger co-founders Matt Hershenson and Joe Britt, two of the guys behind the Sidekick, might want to print a copy of Microsoft's press release to keep track of the org chart they're about to join: Hershenson and Britt report to Roz Ho, corporate vice president of Microsoft's new Premium Mobile Experiences team. Ho reports to Andy Lees, senior vice president of the Mobile Communications Business. That's a group within Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, headed by Robbie Bach. Bach's boss is Steve Ballmer.

Got it? Now get back to work figuring out how to beat Apple's iPhone, RIM's BlackBerry Pearl, and whatever your old friend Andy Rubin (Danger co-founder/former CEO) is cooking up at Google with Android.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/microsoft_swallows_up_danger_
reveals_organizational_complexity

Holy sh*t! New York lawmakers approve 'Amazon tax'

2008-04-15T18:18:00.000-05:00

The New York legislature has approved an ingenious new law that would force Amazon and other big-name online retailers to collect sales tax on all goods shipped to the Empire State.

Last week, the State Legislature approved a $122bn budget, and $50m of that would come from e-tailers who don't maintain New York warehouses or offices.

In accordance with a 1992 Supreme Court case involving an old-school mail order business, American e-tailers are required to collect sales tax only if they have a "physical presence" in the state where a customer resides. Otherwise, the onus is on the customer to declare the purchase on his next tax return - though few remember/choose to do so.

First proposed by former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer - who resigned last month after a federal wiretap caught him with a $1000-a-hour call girl - the new law argues that an e-tailer's physical presence includes "affiliate marketers."

Amazon - which has a rather large affiliate program - has argued that this law "would be a radical departure from anything currently being done in the U.S." And Amazon is right. Nonetheless, Spitzer's replacement, David Paterson, is expected to approve it.

Like Amazon, many customer advocate groups have badmouthed the plan. It would mean customers forking over more tax dollars. But as we've said before: A state has a right to its own taxes.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/14/new_york_legislature_approves_amazon_tax/

All's Well at Intel

2008-04-15T18:16:00.001-05:00

Whew! You could hear Tech sector's sigh of relief all over the land.

Any slowdown in the semiconductor industry due to a weak economic climate appears to be isolated to Advanced Micro Devices so far.

Intel, the biggest chipmaker, reported first-quarter results that were largely in line with analysts' expectations, and it offered a strong outlook for the second quarter as well. It earned $1.4 billion, or 25 cents per share, on revenue of $9.7 billion. Sales were up 9 percent, while net income dropped by 12 percent due to restructuring charges.

"Our first-quarter results demonstrate a strengthening core business and a solid global market environment," said Intel chief executive Paul Otellini in a statement. "We saw healthy demand for our leading-edge processors and chipsets across all segments."

Plenty of technology analysts were worried that current recessionary pressure would hurt computer sales and orders for new chips. Those concerns were underscored last week, when the No. 2 chipmaker, A.M.D., said that its first-quarter sales would fall short of expectations.

"People might now say maybe it's safe to put your feet in the water here,'' Raymond James equity analyst Hans Mosesmann told Bloomberg of Intel. "They have a super product lineup, and A.M.D. is in a death spiral.''

Investors were certainly pleased with the news. Shares of Intel jumped 7 percent in after-hours trading.

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/04/15/Intel-Earnings

Don't Be Evil or don't lose value?

2008-04-15T18:15:00.000-05:00

Funny thing, as Google comes under ever increasing scrutiny for the power it has over our lives, the web giant is tiptoeing back from its long-held corporate motto, Don't Be Evil.

Dominating internet advertising and search have allowed the company to embark on a seemingly endless expansion into all manner of internet products, including email, video sharing, online mapping, mobile phone software, social networking and office productivity.

But while Google's revenues in 2007 were 37 times greater than in 2002 and its headcount has ballooned to well over 16,000 employees, the quest to provide ever-increasing returns to shareholders - the primary objective of any public company - has at times conflicted with its perceived core values.

Some have interpreted the ceaseless criticisms of Google's privacy policies and its co-operation with totalitarian regimes as a sign the Don't Be Evil goal is unattainable for a profit-driven company. At the very least, the corporate motto has encouraged the public and the press to hold Google to a higher standard.

"It really wasn't like an elected, ordained motto," Google's vice-president and 20th employee, Marissa Mayer, said in an interview during her trip to Sydney last week.

"I think that 'Don't Be Evil' is a very easy thing to point at when you see Google doing something that you personally don't like; it's a very easy thing to point out so it does get targeted a lot."

Janis Wardrop, associate lecturer in organisation and management at the University of NSW, said that, regardless of Google's stated motto, companies are always set up to look after their shareholders and not other stakeholders.

"It [the motto] is good PR but really it's empty because it's questionable whether shareholders will care [whether Google is evil or not]," she said.

The most recent Google product to raise the ire of privacy activists is the Street View feature of Google Maps, already launched for over 40 US cities and expected to be unveiled for Australia this year..

Privacy groups are up in arms because Google has not made a firm commitment to obscure faces and number plates, and there have been no assurances that Google's drivers won't accidentally head down private roads.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/dont-be-evil/2008/04/15/1208025168177.html

Don't Be Evil: Did you sign Google's noncompete? Good, you're fired

2008-04-11T11:34:00.000-05:00

A recently departed DoubleClicker tells us that Google managers asked employees at the online ad company it acquired last month to sign one-year noncompete agreements. Most agreed, thinking that it would spare their jobs — but then layoffs came a week later. They were "pretty pissed" over the bait-and-switch and were forced to find jobs outside their industry. The text of the noncompete is below.

8. Covenant Regarding Competition. I agree that for a period of one (1) year after my employment with the Company terminates, I shall not (a) engage in any employment, business or activity that is competitive with the Company's businesses; or (b) solicit business from, do business with or render services to, in any capacity, directly or indirectly, any entity that is or was a Company client or customer within the last twelve months of my employment with the Company, for a purpose or in a manner that is in any way competitive with the Company's business. If, during or after my employment with the Company, I seek work elsewhere, I agree to provide a copy of this Agreement to any person or entities seeking to hire me before accepting employment with or engagement by any such person or entity.

9. Solicitation of Employees. I agree that for a period of twelve (12) months immediately following the

termination of my relationship with the Company for any reason, whether with or without cause, I shall not either directly or indirectly solicit, induce, recruit or encourage any of the Company's employees to leave their employment, or take away such employees, or attempt to solicit, induce, recruit, encourage or take away employees of the Company, either for myself or for any other person or entity

http://valleywag.com/378444/did-you-sign-googles-noncompete-good-youre-fired

Is the Windows ecosystem over yet? Would Redmond even know?

2008-04-11T11:30:00.000-05:00

Last year, in a blog post and a subsequent Computing column, I wrote that the Windows ecosystem is broken. Microsoft's attempts to make Windows backwards compatible with all previous versions, combined with the ballooning number of devices for which developers must write new drivers to work with Windows, is causing the operating system to become bloated and users to become frustrated.

This scenario makes it harder for Microsoft to build new Windows versions, as the OS grows ever more complex. The best evidence: Windows Vista.

Now Gartner, a tech-oriented market research firm, has come to the same conclusion. In a report that's garnered lots of attention the last few days, Analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald told a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas that Windows is "collapsing".

From Computerworld:

"For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable," said Silver and MacDonald in their prepared presentation, titled "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve."

Among Microsoft's problems, the pair said, is Windows' rapidly-expanding code base, which makes it virtually impossible to quickly craft a new version with meaningful changes. That was proved by Vista, they said, when Microsoft -- frustrated by lack of progress during the five-year development effort on the new operating -- hit the "reset" button and dropped back to the more stable code of Windows Server 2003 as the foundation of Vista.

"This is a large part of the reason [why] Windows Vista delivered primarily incremental improvements," they said. In turn, that became one of the reasons why businesses pushed back Vista deployment plans. "Most users do not understand the benefits of Windows Vista or do not see Vista as being better enough than Windows XP to make incurring the cost and pain of migration worthwhile."

I suggested that Microsoft needs to start over from scratch, with a brand new operating system, something Apple periodically has done. While it may sacrifice compatibility -- something that could be addressed through virtualization -- it will ultimately result in a faster, more modern, more stable operating system.

The Gartner analysts come to the same conclusion:

Users want a smaller Windows that can run on low-priced -- and low-powered -- hardware. And increasingly, users work with "OS-agnostic applications," the two analysts said in their presentation. It takes too long for Microsoft to build the next version, the company is being beaten by others in the innovation arena, and in the future -- perhaps as soon as the next three years -- it's going to have trouble competing with Web applications and small, specialized devices.

"Apple introduced its iPhone running OS X, but Microsoft requires a different product on handhelds because Windows Vista is too large, which makes application development, support and the user experience all more difficult," according to Silver and MacDonald.

"Windows as we know it must be replaced," they said in their presentation.

Backward compatibility with older applications should also be supported via virtualization. "Backward compatibility is a losing proposition for Microsoft; while it keeps people locked into Windows, it also often keeps them from upgrading," said the analysts. "[But] using built-in virtualization, compatibility modules could be layered atop Win32, or not, as needed."

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in Microsoft executive committee meetings, as Steve Ballmer et al chew over reports such as this. Do they even get it? Or will projects such as Singularity, which could be the answer, remain confined to the labs at Microsoft Research?

Does Microsoft really understand the issues that threaten it? Or is pride, and the always-fatal notion of "we've always done it this way" the real threat to the company? I'm hoping Microsoft is moving quickly to address what's becoming increasingly obvious to everyone else.

http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2008/04/gartner_figures_out_that
_the_windows_ecosyste_1.html

Yahoo Goes Scorched Earth

2008-04-10T10:42:00.000-05:00

What a day. I can’t say neither side is throwing punches any longer in the epic fight over what’s left of Yahoo. Microsoft and Yahoo are done, for the most part, with sternly worded letters.

Yesterday Yahoo made two announcements/leaks. First, that they were very close to agreeing to terms that would combine Yahoo and AOL as an alternative to the Microsoft deal. And second, that they will run, ahem, a two week test of Google Adsense on 3% of their Yahoo search results page, instead of their own ads.

Microsoft responded that the Google deal is a precursor to handing over de facto monopoly power of the search advertising space. And they threw their own curve ball as well: News Corp. has switched teams and is now in Microsoft’s camp.

The formal entry of AOL into the discussions suggests Time Warner wants to offload the asset soon. If a Microsoft/Yahoo deal goes through, the only realistic suitor for AOL is Google, and that gives them little negotiating leverage.

The News Corp news is more interesting. In a move reminiscent of the Italians switching sides in World War II, they’ve abandoned their Yahoo soul mate for a more compliant Microsoft. They put in a bid for Yahoo in February (more), which was reportedly countered just a couple of weeks ago. My guess is the counter offer wasn’t very interesting, so they switched sides. You gotta love News Corp., they’re always there for you when they need you.

But by far the most interesting news is the Yahoo/Google alliance. Industry insiders still question whether regulators would allow the deal, but Yahoo’s been whispering around Silicon Valley that a business partnership with Google, as opposed to a merger, would stand a much higher likelihood of getting approved.

What Is Yahoo’s Strategy - Scorched Earth, Or Knife To The Nose?

Yahoo has put costly severance plans in place to both retain employees and make themselves a less attractive acquisition candidate. But top talent has left anyway, and just about everyone at Yahoo seems to be looking for a job (even execs I’ve spoken with). Meanwhile, the Google deal shows they would rather give up the search marketing game, their biggest asset, than become part of Microsoft.

Their actions, which appear to be based on destroying their market value as a counter to the Microsoft bid, benefit neither their stockholders nor their employees. And by setting up Google as the only real option in search marketing, they are disrupting what little market balance and competition exists in that space today.

I can’t decide if nose knifing or scorched earth is the best way of describing what they’re doing, but I have to ask: If Yahoo “wins” this epic battle with Microsoft, will there be anything left at the end to celebrate over?

It’s time to end this thing before Yahoo ends itself. I don’t care if they throw AOL, MySpace, and half the rest of the Internet into the deal along with Yahoo. But the health of the Internet demands a counter balance to Google. Yahoo-Microsoft, given the current state of things, is the only reasonable outcome.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/10/yahoo-goes-scorched-earth/

Yahoo! to Microsoft: Surrender? Never

2008-04-08T14:50:00.001-05:00

Why does this deal sound more like the Friends of Dorothy versus the Wicked Witch every day?

Yahoo! has replied promptly to an open letter sent to them by Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer on Saturday.

Ballmer's letter set Yahoo! a three-week deadline to conclude an agreement or Microsoft would take its $44bn offer directly to shareholders.

In response, Yahoo's chief exec Jerry Yang said the board of directors has not changed its mind since it rejected the offer 11 February. He said that Yahoo!'s outlook had not changed its forecast for earnings since then and continued to believe the offer "substantially undervalues Yahoo!".

Yahoo! said Ballmer's letter "mischaracterizes the nature of our discussions with you".

Ballmer said Yahoo! had chosen "not to enter into substantive negotiations with us [Yahoo]".

On the contrary Yahoo's Yang said: "We have had constructive conversations together regarding a variety of topics, including integration and regulatory issues... Moreover, Steve, you personally attended two of these meetings and could have advanced discussions in any way you saw fit."

Yahoo!'s letter also said that Microsoft had failed to respond to questions sent 28 March relating to possible anti-trust and other regulatory matters.

Yang's letter, signed off "Very truly yours", ends: "We are open to all alternatives that maximize stockholder value. To be clear, this includes a transaction with Microsoft if it represents a price that fully recognizes the value of Yahoo! on a standalone basis and to Microsoft, is superior to our other alternatives, and provides certainty of value and certainty of closing. Lastly, we are steadfast in our commitment to choosing a path that maximizes stockholder value and we will not allow you or anyone else to acquire the company for anything less than its full value."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/07/yahoo_microsoft_love_letters/

Online Sales to Soar 17 Percent in '08

2008-04-08T14:49:00.000-05:00

Online spending is expected to rise a robust 17 percent this year, despite a sluggish economy that has bruised many brick-based retailers, according to an annual survey to be released Tuesday.

Retail sales online, excluding travel purchases, are set to grow to $204 billion in 2008 from $174.5 billion last year, fueled by sales of apparel, computers and autos, according to a survey conducted by Internet analysis firm Forrester Research for Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation trade group. That projection is below the 21 percent increase seen in the prior year, but industry officials attribute it to the maturing of the business, not the sluggish economy.

E-commerce ''is clearly the bright spot in retailing,'' said Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org.

The upbeat report contrasts with the outlook for many traditional retailers, which have been paring down store growth and closing shops as they struggle with consumers who don't feel like spending amid higher gas and food costs, a housing slump and a weaker job market. The exceptions are discounters and wholesale clubs, as shoppers turn to less expensive stores.

On Thursday, the nation's retailers are expected to report at best flat sales growth in March, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Same-stores sales are sales at stores opened at least a year and are considered a key indicator of a retailer's health.

Online retailers are not immune to the same economic challenges, but what has spearheaded e-commerce growth is a ''tale of two shoppers that visit the Web for different reasons,'' according to Sucharita Mulpuru, a Forrester Research analyst and lead author of the report.

There are the price-sensitive shoppers who appear to be buying more items online as they look for better prices. And then there are the more affluent customers, who have been increasing their online spending because of the convenience and vast offerings.

But those shoppers looking for a bevy of free online shipping deals may not find them as plentiful as they did last year. The study, which surveyed 125 online retailers in February and March, showed that merchants are less interested in using such promotions this year. While 85 percent of online retailers said they used some shipping incentive in the past year, just 35 percent said they would focus more on these types of deals in 2008.

Instead, retailers said they plan to invest more in advertising on social networking sites like myspace.com and facebook.com, according to the survey.

That may not be the best strategy, according to Mulpuru.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Online-Sales.html?ref=technology

Mr. and Mrs. Boring sue Google over Street View pics

2008-04-08T14:47:00.000-05:00

'Shit, no one’s gonna screw with our privacy but us'

A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania couple has sued Google for invasion of privacy, accusing the world's largest search engine of photographing their swimming pool and posting it to the web.

Aaron and Christine Boring claim that in offering 360-degree panoramic pics of their private residence via Google Street View, the web giant has "caused them mental suffering and diminished the value of their property."

According to their suit - turned up by The Smoking Gun - the Borings purchased their Pittsburgh home in 2006 for "a considerable sum of money," and "a major component of their purchase decision was a desire for privacy". So they were annoyed when pan-and-zoom-able pics of the home, including its swimming pool, turned up on Street View.

These pics were acquired, the suit says, when a Google vehicle appeared on their private road without a privacy waiver or other authorization. Claiming this private road is marked with a "Private Road" sign, the suit calls Google's behavior "an intentional and/or grossly reckless invasion of...seclusion." The Borings' lawyer calls it "outlandish."

"Put yourself in their position," Dennis Moskal told us. "Say you and your wife are in your swimming pool, wearing whatever, and you see a Google vehicle taking photographs of you - and they're close enough to almost hand you a drink. That is a significant invasion of a person's privacy."

So Moskal has filed suit in Pennsylvania state court to get the Borings' privacy back - and a little extra. The suit seeks at least $25,000 in damages.

It appears that Google has now removed the offending pics from Street View. But that doesn't mean the Borings have recovered their privacy. Their lawsuit has also ensured that their house and swimming pool are pictured on all sorts of other sites across the web.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/05/google_street_view_suit/

Apple sued over 'inflated' iMac claims

2008-04-01T14:46:00.000-05:00

Apple, the world's most successful brand, is being sued by a Los Angeles law firm for "deceptively" marketing the new 20-inch iMac

Kabateck Brown Kellner says the monitor is "vastly inferior to the previous generation it replaced", not that you would know it from Apple's "grossly inflated" claims.

According to the law firm, Apple told consumers both the 20-inch and 24-inch iMacs displayed "millions of colors at all resolutions":

Indeed, the new 24-inch iMacs display 16,777,216 colors on 8-bit, in-plane switching (IPS) screens, as did the previous generation of 20-inch iMacs. But the new 20-inch iMac monitors do not even come close, displaying 98% fewer colors (262,144).

While Apple describes the display of both the 24-inch and 20-inch iMacs as though they were interchangeable, the monitors in each are of radically different technology. The 20-inch iMacs feature 6-bit twisted nematic film (TN) LCD screens, the least expensive of its type.

The 20-inch iMac's TN screens have a narrower viewing angle, less color depth, less color accuracy and are more susceptible to washout across the screen.

Why does hundreds of thousands, rather than millions, of colors merit a class action? According to KBK, the new 20-inch iMac, the one launched in August 2007, is:

particularly ill-suited to editing photographs because of the display's limited color potential and the distorting effect of the color simulation processes.

KBK has filed suit in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California in San Jose - in Apple's home turf. Boy are these guys tough, riding shotgun into Silicon Valley, where Apple is a religion, and Steve Jobs is God.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/04/01/apple_imac_class_action/

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are the same man!

2008-04-01T14:44:00.000-05:00

Wonder why the two tech bigwigs never seen in a room together?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and former head of Microsoft Bill Gates are actually the same man, it was revealed today.

The man, known as Steve Gates, made the announcement to a stunned crowd this morning. Taking his Apple form, he said "Just one more thing...", before pulling off a mask unveiling his Microsoft face.

The revelation will leave fanboys popping their corks.

One said: "I know Apple are known for making big announcements on a Tuesday, but this is ridiculous."

Some commentators were unsurprised, pointing out that the two formats' operating systems have been getting more alike year by year.

http://www.t3.com/news/bill-gates-and-steve-jobs-are-the-same-man?=35492

Yahoo! cuddles Google's bastard grid-child

2008-03-26T23:42:00.000-05:00

Gets 'butt kicking' from Microsoft

Stuffed Elephant Summit Sometime after the New Year, Yahoo! flipped the switch on what it calls the world’s largest Hadoop application, using the much-hyped open-source grid computing platform to tackle a task no smaller than the web itself.

Known as Yahoo! Search Webmap, this Hadoopified mega-app provides the world’s second most popular search engine with a database of all known web pages – complete with all the metadata needed to understand those pages. Yes, Yahoo! has crunched such data for years now, but thanks to Hadoop - an Apache project that mimics the GFS and MapReduce grid technologies developed at Google – Webmap can deliver the goods significantly faster than the company’s old school setup.

"When building our web index, one of the things we do is build a graph of all the links on the web. We start with all the web pages we know of. We extract links and other metadata. And then we aggregate up a big system-wide view of the Web," Yahoo! Grid Computing Pooh-Bah Eric Baldeschwieler told The Reg at the Yahoo!-sponsored Hadoop developer’s summit in Santa Clara, California. "With Webmap, we can do this 33 per cent faster on the same hardware."

According to Baldeschwieler, this far exceeded expectations. "The previous system – which we built in 2000 – was all C++. And with the new system we moved to Java," he explained. "The belief was that moving to Java would slow everything and that we would pay a penalty in moving to the new framework.

"When it’s running perfectly, the old system does outperform the new one. But of course hardware fails and there are all sorts of scenarios under which the old system doesn’t perform perfectly. Hadoop gives us much more flexibility. It’s built around the idea of running commodity hardware that runs all the time."

Hadoop is the bastard brainchild of Google and a man named Doug Cutting. Back in 2004, while developing Nutch, an open source search engine, Cutting realized that his engine wouldn't purr unless it was juiced with some sort of distributing computing platform. And for reasons unknown, Google had just published a pair of research papers that detailed GFS, its distributed file system, and MapReduce, a means of pooling processing power.

So Cutting and his open-source pals went to work on a project that would duplicate Google’s technologies – and maybe even (cough) improve them. He dubbed the project Hadoop after his son’s yellow stuffed elephant.

By early 2006, Yahoo! was flirting with the project, and the company soon gave Cutting a job. At the time, Hadoop and Nutch ran on just 20 nodes, indexing about 100m web pages. Two years later, Hadoop and Yahoo! Search Webmap run on 10,000 processor cores, indexing, um, many more web pages. "I can’t say exactly how many," Cutting told the Stuffed Elephant Summit. "Let’s just say it’s far in excess of 100 million."

But Yahoo! isn’t the only one that’s fallen for Hadoop. IBM Research turned up at the summit to show off JAQL, a language suited to building JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) apps atop Hadoop. Amazon, a summit co-sponsor, discussed the benefits of running Hadoop on its EC2 web services. And more than 350 developers turned up to listen – though Yahoo! had originally expected fewer than 100.

Baldeschwieler also pointed out that 28 separate developers have trumpeted their Hadoop clusters on the official Hadoop wiki. "And that’s just a small fraction of the people using it," he said. "I would guess 100s of organizations have adopted the platform. There’s definitely a lot of interest - and a lot of discussion."

Microsoft is not one of those organizations. Redmond’s research arm is building its own grid-computing platform, Dryad. And Dryad is not open source. But that didn’t stop the company from attending a conference dedicated to all things Hadoop.

Microsoft’s Michael Isard used his half hour to trumpet DryadLINQ, a programming language that mirrors IBM’s JAQL and a Yahoo!-led open source initiative called Pig. Except that it doesn’t run on Hadoop. It runs on Dryad.

At least one developer was mighty impressed with the presentation. But he still wondered whether DryadLINQ was already irrelevant. "I think you’re kicking everyone’s butt. You’re already working on a higher level of abstraction than anyone else," he told Isard. "But since you’re proprietary technology, we’ll have to wait and see how effective you’ll be."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/26/yahoo_hadoop_summit/

Adobe Unveils Webtop Version of Photoshop. Picnik Is Not Scared.

2008-03-26T23:40:00.001-05:00

Erick Schonfeld

As I alluded to in an earlier post, online photo-editing applications keep getting better as the competition heats up between startups like Picnik and FotoFlexer. Today, a very large competitor, Adobe, is entering the market by releasing a Web-based version of Photoshop for editing pictures called Photoshop Express. It is in public beta and anyone can sign up.

Photoshop Express is by no means just Photoshop ported onto the web. It would even be a stretch to say it’s a stripped down version of the desktop software, since it’s intended for mainstream consumers, not professionals.

This distinction shows in both what it lacks and what it offers. There are only 17 editing features in Photoshop Express: a tiny fraction of those available with the $650 desktop software. And all of these 17 features are filters intended for tuning and effects - you won’t find any tools for drawing lines, adding text, or creating shapes. What you can do is easily take out red eye, touch up undesirable areas, change saturation, pop color, and crop (among other things).

One of the most innovative features in Photoshop Express is the ability to revert any filter you apply to a photograph. You can do this to a particular filter regardless of whether you’ve made other changes to the photo since applying it. All you have to do is uncheck the particular filter and it will be subtracted from your changes, which are represented in a historical filmstrip with all versions of the photo you have gone through. This undo functionality for particular changes partly makes up for the unfortunate absence of layers, which are so vitally important in the desktop version of Photoshop.

Photoshop Express also differs from its desktop cousin by serving as an online storage and photo sharing service. You can upload up to 2GB of photos to the web app (or pull them in directly from Facebook, Photobucket, or Picassa). They are arranged in a collection that can be made available to others or kept private. Embedding and slideshow functionality is also available.

Adobe has other motivations behind this launch: Doug Mack, the vice president in charge of Photoshop Express, says:

It is a showcase of what is the best that can be done with Flex and Flash. Hopefully, it will inspire other developers. We are also setting up a hosted services platform that we can expand to other products.

So this is just the beginning for Adobe. Should smaller fry like Picnik be scared now that Adobe is, uh, flexing its muscles online? Picnik CEO Jonathan Sposato isn’t too worried. He gives me the classic Innovator’s Dilemma argument:

We don’t envy the challenge Adobe is facing—they have to deal with not cannibalizing a highly successful finished-goods business. Adobe has a business to protect, while Picnik has a business to build.

Okay, but what about Adobe’s massive distribution through its existing products (Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.). Sposato’s got an answer for that one as well:

Sure, I think their distribution is a great strength for them. And there’s definitely a Windows vs. Mac analogy here. But i think today’s internet is so incredibly efficient that traditional models of distribution may matter less and less. The cost of switching apps for most users is just so easy. They can find new things really fast and try them out.

Hopefully, I am not smoking crack but I do think the marketplace is so efficient that we can compete based ultimately on quality and ‘winsomeness’ of the product (to use a very old fashion word).

No Jonathan, you’re not smoking crack. May the most winsome product win.

http://www.techcrunch.com/

Researchers' push: reinvent computing

2008-03-24T09:27:00.000-05:00

UC-BERKELEY 1 OF 2 UNIVERSITIES TO RECEIVE GRANT

Intel and Microsoft said last week that they planned to finance two groups of university researchers to start over and design a new generation of computing systems intended to break the industry out of a technological cul-de-sac that threatens to end decades of performance increases in computers.

If the research efforts succeed, this would enable the development of new kinds of portable computers and would help computer engineers tackle areas as diverse as speech recognition, image processing, health care systems and music. For example, a music professor at the University of California-Berkeley, David L. Wessel, envisions a new era of digital musical instruments that would begin to match the rich versatility of acoustic instruments like violins and pianos.

The research grant, worth $20 million over five years, will create independent laboratories at Berkeley and at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, that will be charting a way to reinvent computing. Each will work on hardware, software and a new generation of applications powered by computer chips containing multiple processors. The University of Illinois plans to contribute an additional $8 million to the project and the Berkeley project is applying for an additional $7 million from a state-supported program to match the industry grants.

The computer industry has generally stopped relying on regular increases in the processing speed of chips. In recent years, it has bet instead that future advances in speed and energy efficiency will come from putting multiple processors on a single silicon chip. A number of computer functions can then be done in parallel rather than sequentially.

The new research agenda was motivated in part by an increasing sense that the industry is in a crisis of a sort because advanced parallel software has failed to emerge quickly. Most programmers today still write programs that solve problems in a serial fashion.

The most advanced consumer-oriented microprocessors have up to eight processors, or cores, on a chip, but the industry is moving toward chips with 100 or more. The problem, according to academic researchers and industry executives, is that the software to keep dozens of processors busy simultaneously for all kinds of computing problems does not exist.

Although the amounts of the grant are modest, both universities have a reputation for early-stage research that has had notable impacts on the computer industry. The director of the new Universal Parallel Computing Research Center at Berkeley, the computer scientist David Patterson, has been associated with significant breakthroughs both in microprocessor and computer storage system design. The University of Illinois laboratory will be led by Marc Snir, a professor of computer science, and Wen-mei Hwu, professor of electrical and computer engineering. The laboratory will include the participation of David Kuck, a University of Illinois researcher who was a pioneer in the field of parallel computing and who is presently an Intel Fellow.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_8676027

Yahoo! tries to whip investors into line

2008-03-20T11:04:00.000-05:00

Promises moon on a stick

Yahoo! increased the pressure on Microsoft to up its offer for the internet firm yesterday by telling investors it expects to double cash flow over the next three years.

Jerry Yang gave the presentation to institutional shareholders in order to persuade them that the company is worth more than the $44bn Microsoft has offered for it. Some observers also interpreted the presentation as evidence that Yahoo! had failed to find alternative suitors.

Yahoo! expects to double operating cash flow from $1.9bn to $3.7bn and bring in $8.8bn in revenue excluding traffic aquisition costs (TAC) in 2010.

The statement said Yahoo! is still looking for alternatives to the Microsoft offer.

Yahoo! said it expected to bring in $1.9bn in extra revenue over three years from display and video advertising - faster growth than the market generally. It also predicts $1.4bn in extra search revenue - in line with expected growth.

The company talked up its "Starting Points" strategy of concentrating on websites which users return to several times a day.

The company claims 305 million unique monthly users of its homepage and 262 million unique monthly users of its email service.

In other news, Chinese business ecommerce site Alibaba is looking for investors to fund a buyback of the 39 per cent stake in the company owned by Yahoo!, according to Reuters.

Alibaba clearly thinks the takeover will go ahead and wishes to stay out of Microsoft's grip. The 2005 agreement with Yahoo! gives Alibaba right of first refusal should Yahoo! wish to sell its stake.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/19/yahoo_alibaba/

Apple may bundle unlimited iTunes with iPods

2008-03-19T15:53:00.000-05:00

It's about time! A report by the Financial Times (registration required) cites unnamed executives who say that Apple is in talks with record labels to offer access to the entire iTunes music library for a lump sum price. The fee would be added as a premium option on an iPod or iPhone, or it could come as a monthly charge. It would allow downloading of any song at any time so long as the purchaser still owns the device, and the songs would be yours to keep.

This latest concept is similar to Nokia's "Comes With Music" program set to launch later this year. Nokia is reportedly rolling an $80 fee into the price of compatible phones for one year of access to Nokia's music store, which includes music from labels like Universal.

Apple's plan is different in several respects. Since the average iPod owner buys about 20 tracks from the iTunes, Apple wants to make the premium about $20, arguing that it should cover the average consumer's downloads. Then the owner can make unlimited music downloads from the iTunes Store for the life of the device. Once downloaded, the tracks are yours to keep, even if you get rid of the original iPod or iPhone. And since iPod and phone owners tend to replace devices fairly regularly, the record labels would be getting the fee whether or not the consumer makes any further downloads. Silicon Alley Insider did the math and thinks it's a good deal all around. But according to the Financial Times' sources, the labels are looking for numbers closer to the $80 Nokia is reported to be paying.

There's still the question of DRM, however. Even though the tracks are yours, any non-iTunes Plus tracks will still be beholden to FairPlay restrictions, so this could also be a good way to lock consumers into repeat Apple purchases (unless they're willing to have their music tethered to their computers). The Nokia plan use Plays For Sure, which won't play for sure on iPods or even Zunes, and Comes With Music doesn't allow you to keep listening to tracks once your subscription period has expired

While Apple's program certainly sounds like it could go over well with consumers, the negotiations are not over. Apple will need to get all the labels on board for the plan to work. If we've learned anything from recent music licensing debates, it's that they are contentious. How much do the songwriters deserve? What should be the labels' share? In addition, the labels are sure to want a plan that increases their revenue, rather than a plan that simply compensates them for what the average iPod owner already pays.

While the labels remain leery of finding themselves under Jobs' thumb once more, their embrace of DRM-free formats that can play on the iPod has negated one of Apple's longtime advantages in these licensing negotiations, and could well make the labels more likely to deal. They are also in the position to offer Apple a carrot of their own: access to MP3 files for regular, pay-per-track downloads (iTunes currently has only EMI on board with DRM-free music).

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080319-apple-may-bundle-unlimited-
itunes-with-ipods.html

Google says well positioned for economic downturn

2008-03-18T13:00:00.000-05:00

You’ve been so worried, you haven’t gotten a good night sleep in weeks, right? Of course, right! Google, the world's leading Internet search engine, said on Tuesday it was well positioned to weather any economic downturn as its advertisers were broad based.

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledged sliding share values and a shortage of credit in financial markets was "a very serious issue" and that many people were expecting a global economic slowdown.

"It's too early to say if there's (already) been any specific impact but if there were I don't think it would be much," Schmidt told reporters at a briefing during a visit to Sydney.

"We believe that if there were (a U.S. recession), we'll be well positioned. We're not particularly dependent on any particular one market. There's not a lot of advertising for any one market over another," he said.

Direct marketing, a successor to online marketing, had historically performed well in times of economic recession, Schmidt said.

"There tends to be a flight in a global slowdown to higher quality advertising and higher quality advertising is determined by what sells," he said.

Google, which earned $4.827 billion (2.4 billion pounds) in revenue in the fourth quarter, makes around 98 percent of its income from text ads but was exploring new formats, such as advertising on You Tube videos.

Google has a $900 million, three-year deal to sell advertising to News Corp's MySpace customers under which it must pay MySpace whether or not it makes money selling ads on the site.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKSYD17339220080318

They’re coming to take you away, ha ha!

2008-03-18T12:58:00.000-05:00

According to the Ottawa Citizen, obsessive e-mailing and text messaging could soon be classed as an official mental disorder. The notion stems from a soon to be published editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry which makes the case that Internet addiction is a common compulsive-impulsive disorder which should be classed by physicians as a brain illness.

Apparently, Internet addiction can include "excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging". If you find that all of the above apply to you on a daily basis, please check yourself into your nearest mental health clinic immediately.

A psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Dr Jerald Block, reckons that, like alcohol and drug addicts, Internet junkies get cravings, urges, withdrawal symptoms, and are always looking for bigger and better quality hardware and software to feed their appetites and increase their buzz. The doc says that about 86 per cent of Internet junkies have a form of mental sickness, characterised by users losing track of time spent online and neglect of "basic drives," like eating or sleeping.

Not all psychiatrists agree with Doc Block though. Last year, British psychiatrists writing in the Advances in Psychiatric Treatment journal, reckoned that only between five and ten per cent of Internet users were actually addicted, with the majority of hardcore addicts being middle aged desperate housewives.

Block also notes that the problems are at their most severe in Asia, namely in China and South Korea. He claims that there have already been several Internet gaming related deaths in cyber cafes caused by heart and lung failures [lung failure? - Ed] and that the Korean government has trained over 1,000 counsellors to help people deal with their addictions.

Beating an Internet addiction is apparently not something to be taken lightly though. People often relapse into their old Web habits and some could even require medication or hospitalisation.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/03/18/addiction-internet-mental

Online advertiser to settle spam charges for record $2.9 million

2008-03-17T16:29:00.000-05:00

There is a God after all! An online advertising company accused of luring customers with deceptive offers of "free" iPhones, laptop computers, plasma televisions, and other goods has agreed to pay a record $2.9 million fine as part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.

According to a federal court filing (PDF) released Monday, since at least early 2005, Westlake Village, Calif.-based ValueClick and its subsidiary Hi-Speed Media have been attempting to lure consumers to their Web sites through e-mails and Web-based ads bearing slogans like "Free PS3 for survey" or "let us buy you a 42 inch plasma tv! Just type in your zip code." The purpose of those operations was "lead generation"--that is, connecting consumers with advertisers trying to sell certain goods or services, the FTC complaint said.

Trouble is, the companies didn't disclose "clearly and conspicuously" that, in reality, the offers weren't exactly free, the FTC charged. Instead, consumers were required to fulfill certain obligations or incur various other expenses--for instance, applying for car loans or credit cards--in order to qualify for those goods. In addition to allegedly running afoul of a broader law prohibiting unfair and deceptive practices, the FTC said that misleading subject lines in those e-mails violated the 2003 Can-Spam Act, which regulates distribution of bulk e-mail.

The alleged violations didn't stop there: The companies also gathered sensitive credit card and financial information but did not encrypt that data in a way that's consistent with industry standards or take other steps to protect it from hackers--even though they claimed to do otherwise, the FTC said.

The charges resulted in the largest settlement amount the FTC has reached under Can-Spam, the agency said in a statement. Until Monday's announcement, the FTC's highest settlement under Can-Spam occurred in March 2006, when a company called Jumpstart, which allegedly sent misleading e-mails offering free movie tickets, agreed to pay $900,000 in civil penalties.

It was also the FTC's third case targeting "deceptive promises of free merchandise" by Internet lead generation enterprises. In a case last November, a company called Adteractive, which allegedly lured customers to its Web sites with promises of "free gifts," agreed to pay $650,000 in civil penalties as part of an FTC settlement.

In addition to the monetary payout, ValueClick is required to make clear disclosures about what its customers must do in exchange for the free products. It also must establish and maintain a "comprehensive security program" for protecting personal information, subject to mandatory "independent third-party" reviews, for 20 years.

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9895699-7.html

Report: Yahoo, Microsoft execs in talks

2008-03-14T14:24:00.000-05:00

Surprise, surprise. Execs from Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. met to talk about the possibility of a deal for the first time since Microsoft's $44.6 billion offer was rejected, according to reports Friday.
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, said the meeting was mainly so Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft could outline its plan for the combined company.

No bankers were present, the Journal reported.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo shares rose on the news, going up to $27.96 in morning trading after closing at $26.79.In February Yahoo was hit with seven shareholder lawsuits claiming that the Internet company mishandled its response to the takeover bid.

Four suits were filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court and three in Delaware by pension funds that own Yahoo stock.

Yahoo said earlier that the offer undervalues the company.

Microsoft, in response, began readying a proxy fight that could unseat the 10-member board, including Jerry Yang, co-founder and chief executive.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2008/03/10/daily78.html?jst=b_ln_hl

Why Microsoft should be eating their heart out about new NPD sales figures

2008-03-14T14:22:00.000-05:00

The console sales numbers for February are here, and sales have yet to slow down appreciably from the phenomenal year we had in 2007. But Microsoft has cause for concern about Sony's performance. The Xbox 360 maker told us to expect this a slow month due to supply constraints, but many observers won't concern themselves with the whys of a second consecutive disappointing month. Instead, the story will be that Sony has smoked Microsoft two months running. Sony now has some strong momentum that it can ride into the launch of industry juggernauts like Metal Gear Solid 4—which Sony will exploit with a new system bundle to draw in first-time PS3 buyers—and Gran Turismo 5: Prologue.

Add in the fact that Sony is now sitting on the de-facto high-definition standard in Blu-ray and the PlayStation 3 is by far the most future proof—and affordable—Blu-ray player, it has a distinct advantage for consumers who want more than just games out of their consoles. According to another study by the NPD Group, gamers are a very media-hungry bunch, and the PlayStation 3 simply gives them more choices in that area than the Xbox 360.

"Consumers are recognizing the tremendous value of PS3 and we believe that Blu-ray becoming the high-def format of choice was the tipping point for many consumers," SCEA president Jack Tretton said in a comment about the February numbers.

Sony wants to focus on the strength of the entire PlayStation brand, noting that it generated the most US retail dollars in the industry for the second consecutive month with $511 million in sales—52 percent and 6 percent higher than Microsoft and Nintendo, respectively. This month's PlayStation 2 sales prove that Sony has three viable systems filling living rooms with hardware

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080314-why-microsoft-should-be-worried
-about-new-npd-sales-figures.html

iPod Scare Leads to Inquiry in Japan

2008-03-12T10:32:00.000-05:00

It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep — but there’s an iPod in the house, and it’s recharging …

The government of a technology-obsessed nation has officially raised the specter of the unsafe iPod, a little gadget you see just about everywhere (100 million of them have been sold in 5 years, or 1 for every 67 people on Earth):

Japan is investigating a possible defect in Apple Inc.’s iPod after one of the popular digital music players reportedly shot out sparks while recharging, a government official said Wednesday.

The rare bout of bad publicity for the lovable device was prompted by a single reported case, though several others have turned up in other countries.

The leading explanation would be a familiar one to Apple and other computer manufacturers: lithium ion batteries have been known to overheat and explode in laptops occasionally. But the tiny batteries in the iPod have so far managed to steer clear of that pitfall. (They have attracted many more complaints for being impossible to remove.)

The risk of overheating and fire was why the Federal Aviation Administration banned spare lithium-ion batteries from checked airline baggage and restricted them in carry-on bags at the beginning of the year. But rest assured, those crying babies and high-pitched yammerers will continue to be shut out (somewhat) by your favorite playlists for the foreseeable future.

Smaller batteries installed in cellphones, music players and most laptops are not affected by the ban, only larger ones for audio/visual equipment. Besides, if there turns out to be a problem with the model under investigation in Japan (iPod Nano, model number MA099J/A), it would seem to be limited to the times when it is plugged in for recharging.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/ipod-scare-leads-to-inquiry-in-japan/index.html?ref=technology

Winning One for the Google

2008-03-11T13:40:00.001-05:00

Google may not be able to stop Microsoft from swallowing up Yahoo, but it has bolstered its arsenal with the acquisition of DoubleClick.

That $3.1 billion deal has been cleared by European regulators, the last hurdle after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved it in December.

Some internet and advertising companies said after the deal was first announced in April that a combination of Google—which dominates search and has become extremely profitable from placing text ads by search results—and the biggest internet advertising company would limit competition in online advertising.

But the European Commission found that the merger would not impede competition, noting that advertisers and other customers had options with Microsoft, AOL, and, yes, Yahoo.

"The commission's in-depth market investigation found that Google and DoubleClick were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other's activities and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors at the moment," the regulator said.

"The market investigation also found that the merged entity would not have the incentive to close off access for competitors in the ad-serving market, mainly because such strategies would be unlikely to be profitable."

DoubleClick places and tracks online ads, acting as a broker between portals like Google and advertisers. The acquisition of DoubleClick is expected to help Google expand beyond paid search ads and do more with banner ads and videos.

http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/03/11/Googles-Deal-Cleared/?TID=dealpartnerbadge

One trouble with Steve Jobs

2008-03-10T02:04:00.000-05:00

Jobs likes to make his own rules, whether the topic is computers, stock options, or even pancreatic cancer. The same traits that make him a great CEO drive him to put his company, and his investors, at risk.

In October 2003, as the computer world buzzed about what cool new gadget he would introduce next, Apple CEO Steve Jobs - then presiding over the most dramatic corporate turnaround in the history of Silicon Valley - found himself confronting a life-and-death decision.

During a routine abdominal scan, doctors had discovered a tumor growing in his pancreas. While a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is often tantamount to a swiftly executed death sentence, a biopsy revealed that Jobs had a rare - and treatable - form of the disease. If the tumor were surgically removed, Jobs' prognosis would be promising: The vast majority of those who underwent the operation survived at least ten years.

Yet to the horror of the tiny circle of intimates in whom he'd confided, Jobs was considering not having the surgery at all. A Buddhist and vegetarian, the Apple CEO was skeptical of mainstream medicine. Jobs decided to employ alternative methods to treat his pancreatic cancer, hoping to avoid the operation through a special diet - a course of action that hasn't been disclosed until now.

For nine months Jobs pursued this approach, as Apple's board of directors and executive team secretly agonized over the situation - and whether the company needed to disclose anything about its CEO's health to investors. Jobs, after all, was widely viewed as Apple's irreplaceable leader, personally responsible for everything from the creation of the iPod to the selection of the chef in the company cafeteria. News of his illness, especially with an uncertain outcome, would surely send the company's stock reeling. The board decided to say nothing, after seeking advice on its obligations from two outside lawyers, who agreed it could remain silent.

In the end, Jobs had the surgery, on Saturday, July 31, 2004, at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, near his home. The revelation of his brush with death remained - like everything involving Jobs and Apple - a tightly controlled affair. In fact, nary a word got out until Jobs' tumor had been removed. The next day, in an upbeat e-mail to employees later released to the press, he announced that he had faced a life-threatening illness and was "cured." Jobs assured everyone that he'd be back on the job in September. When trading resumed a day after the announcement, Apple shares fell just 2.4%.

Apple entertained no further questions about Jobs' health, citing the CEO's need for privacy. No one learned just how long Jobs had been sick - or that he had contemplated not having the surgery at all. "It was very traumatic for all of us," recalls one of those in whom Jobs confided, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the topic's sensitivity. "We all really care about Steve, and it was a serious risk for the company as well. It was a very emotional and very difficult time. This was one page in the adventure."

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news/companies/elkind_jobs.fortune/index.htm

Jobs unveils plans to dominate RIM BlackBerry, Life, the Universe, and Everything

2008-03-08T15:49:00.000-06:00

'We will build 12 Amazons. Or 4 Googles' Resistance is futile

Apple will rejigger the iPhone in a sweeping effort to satisfy email-addicted business people, video game junkies, and third-party software developers who don't mind getting Apple's approval for their applications.

Today, during a press fest at its Cupertino, California headquarters that did needless to say not include The Reg, Jerkoff Jobs and company announced a Microsoft Exchange-friendly version of their handheld status symbol, before unveiling the long-awaited iPhone SDK and an "App Store" where you can purchase the fruits of this software developer's kit.

Due in June, the next version of the iPhone will make like BlackBerry, connecting directly to Microsoft's biz-centric server platform. This means Exchange will have the power to push emails, calendar items, and contacts onto the phone. And that will make the folks at RIM very nervous.

Yes, Apple has licensed the ActiveSync protocol from its Redmond arch-rival.

But in opening up the iPhone to third-party developers, the company has stopped short of the Microsoft way. Apple reserves the right to approve every application built for its beloved handheld, funneling each and every one through its new App Store.

At the press fest, Electronic Arts and Sega trumpeted new games for phone. Salesforce.com showed off a less frivolous app (or more frivolous, depending on you point of view). And venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers announced a $100m "iFund" that will do nothing but iFund other iPhone iApps.

"That should be enough to start about a dozen Amazons or even four Googles," the firm said. "And if we're running out of money, we'll run around and look for more

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/07/iphone_sdk_debuts/

Wikipedia boss slammed for expense claims

2008-03-06T10:42:00.000-06:00

Former employee says boss owed $30,000 in receipts

It's not been a good week for Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

Not only has his break-up with his girlfriend been splashed all over the papers, but now a former member of his staff has hit out at its spending habits.

Danny Wool has gone to the press telling not only of massive expense bills for the Wikipedia Foundation, which relies on public contributions and grants to fund its operations, but also of in-fighting prompted by Wales' spending.

He said: "At one point, [Wales] owed the Foundation some $30,000 in receipts, and this while we were preparing for the audit."

"His credit card was taken away from him, and he was told he had to pay that back."

But Wool says $7,000 worth of receipts were returned but the rest went unaccounted for.

In an IM conversation with The Associated Press, Wales denied that his Foundation credit card was taken away, saying it was his decision to stop submitting receipts for reimbursement.

Wikimedia executive director Sue Gardner posted a reply to Wool, on his blog stating: "Jimmy [Wales] has never used Wikimedia money to subsidise his personal expenditures. Indeed, he has consistently put the Foundation's interests ahead of his own, and has erred on the side of personally paying for his own Wikimedia-related expenditures, rather than the reverse."

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/13285/14309/Wiki-boss-slammed-for-expenses.phtml

Bill Gates loses richest man crown

2008-03-06T10:41:00.000-06:00

Bill Gates is no longer the richest man on the planet. Investment guru Warren Buffett has knocked him off the number one spot for the first time in over a decade.

Gates has been at the top of the annual Forbes rich list for the past 13 years.

Buffett now has a personal fortune of about $62bn - ahead of Gates' cash pile of $58bn.

Gates was pushed into third place on the preposterously prosperous list because Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim Helú has also jumped ahead of the Microsoft co-founder, with total wealth estimated at $60bn.

Despite his relegation to third place, Gates, who steps down as Redmond head honcho in June, still pulled in an eye-popping $2bn in the past 12 months alone.

Meanwhile, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire on the list.

He's already put an estimated $1.5bn into his piggy bank, even though the 23-year-old is yet to poke a profit out of his social networking website.

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/03/06/bill_gates_forbes_rich_list/